


Soldiers Coming Home

by mirothecat



Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Friendship, Gen, Humor, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Multi, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-22
Updated: 2019-07-12
Packaged: 2019-07-15 11:13:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 27
Words: 38,827
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16061945
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mirothecat/pseuds/mirothecat
Summary: A recovering!Bucky story that picks up in the museum. Not AOU or later compliant, because I started writing it before then. Full spectrum from cute and funny to very dark is covered as Bucky regains his memories of life both before and after the war. Could be triggering in places and honestly I don't have a good system for providing warnings without spoilers, so, um, Hydra did really shitty things to Bucky and he will have some flashbacks because as the longest serving POW in history of-effing-course he has PTSD. But there's a lot of humor too, and as someone who actually has PTSD in real life it was really kind of cathartic to write a character who does as well.





	1. Chapter 1

"Bucky." The Soldier's head jerked up slightly before he caught himself. He cast a sideways gaze to make sure that it had in fact been the Captain's voice and not some random tourists talking about the exhibit in front of him.

It was. He met the taller man's concerned blue eyes only momentarily before dropping his gaze like a repentant child. "That's... That's really me, isn't it?" He asked softly, inclining his head almost imperceptibly toward the display case where the glass reflected his tired and stubbled face, framed by a curtain of greasy shoulder-length hair, next to that of a handsome young soldier who he felt like he'd seen before. He supposed he could remember seeing that face in the mirror, vaguely anyway, as if it had been a dream.

"Yeah, Buck, it is." The Captain's eyes searched his face. "Where have you been staying? Come home with me."

"I'm fine."

He didn't seem to have convinced the Captain any more than he'd convinced himself. "You look and smell like you've been sleeping rough. At least come have a shower and a solid meal and talk with me someplace more private than this."

The Soldier hesitated. He couldn't remember the last time he'd bathed, or had proper food. Not that food sounded appealing right now--he hadn't been doing the greatest job of keeping down what food he had stolen--but the _idea_ of it sounded nice. The idea of sitting down, being safe, relaxing even slightly, if only for a few minutes, was tempting. He was so tired, weak, shaky. He had difficulty caring what ulterior motives the Captain might have, even as a vengeful voice in the back of his head screamed that he needed to get to work making Hydra PAY and what if the Captain got in the way of that?

"Please Bucky. Come home with me and talk, if only to give me closure." The Captain was almost pleading.

Something about it stirred a weird, long-forgotten, feeling of affection in him. "Fine." He mumbled.

"Shower and food, too?"

"Sure."

\----

The hot water was heaven on _almost_ all of him as he braced himself against the wall of the hotel shower and let it run over him. His chest burned dizzyingly under the spray. It had hurt before, but washing it _really_ hurt. He hadn't actually seen his injuries since putting on his stolen clothes, several days ago now. The whole side of his chest was swollen and an angry red that contrasted starkly with the rainbow of bruises covering his right shoulder and the rest of his torso, crusted heavily around where flesh met metal. He gritted his teeth against the pain and let the water run over it anyway, rinsing away the top layer of sweat and blood and dirt. The pain was getting worse with time, too. Probably. Moving either arm hurt like hell, but the shoulder that the Captain had dislocated trying to make him let go of the chip was improving--or he thought so anyway--so it was a moving point of comparison. Whatever. Between his shoulder and his chest and the ribs he'd probably broken having a metal beam fall on him, moving fucking hurt.

But no matter. What was a little physical pain compared to everything else going on in his life?

His legs starting to tremble from being on his feet drew him out, to find that the clothes he'd taken off had been stealthily replaced by a clean tracksuit. That little kindness was more than he deserved. At least the sweatshirt had a pocket to hide his metal hand out of sight in.

"Hey! That feel better now? Have some food. I'm sorry I don't have anything homemade..."

The Soldier eyed the table loaded with something resembling every imaginable kind of takeout available in DC, before reaching (very) gingerly for some variety of white meat. He _should_ attempt to get something into himself, and that looked like it might be easy on his stomach. "This is more than enough. Thank you."

"Of course! You're my best friend, Bucky, even if you don't remember growing up together right now. With you to the end of the line, you told me once, and I'm going to take care of you." The Captain told him earnestly.

The Soldier stared awkwardly at his plate, fiddling with a plastic fork. "I'm sorry."

"What for? You're not a burden. That's what friends are for."

"For not remembering our friendship. For hurting you. For everything I did under their control that's been wiped from my mind." He wanted to flee. Should flee. Didn't deserve this. But he was too tired to fight it. He could barely stay upright just now. That probably wasn't good, but he didn't have the energy think about the implications of that.

The Captain leaned over and squeezed his shoulder. The one that hadn't been dislocated, and on the flesh part of it not the metal part. Which the Soldier appreciated. "None of that is your fault. They used you, played around with your mind. But you're safe now, and it seems like you're starting to get your memory back. And I'm going to help you. It'll all come back if we just jog your memory enough." He sat back. "Eat. You probably haven't had proper food since the tavern we stopped at a week before we lost you. Since you clearly want to feel bad about something, I'll tell you about some of the things you did to me before the war and see if it jogs your memory at all. Starting with physically dragging me onto the Cyclone at Coney Island."

That was vaguely familiar. He didn't _remember_ , but he somehow _knew_ that that was a roller coaster and could piece the rest together. Enough, anyway. The corner of his mouth twitched despite himself. "Gee, thanks."


	2. Chapter 2

Ultimately he did accept the invitation to stay the night. He had nowhere else to go, and no willpower or strength to move more than necessary whatsoever, and the Captain's hotel room had a second bed. The bed felt strange, too soft, after the army and the cryo chamber where Hydra had stored him and the nooks and crannies where he'd caught catnaps in the time since his escape, but after a while he drifted into a fitful sleep filled with dreams involving a handsome young army sergeant and his scrawny best friend who kept getting in fights with bigger guys. He kept trying to slow down the dreams so that he could get a look at the details, but every time he tried the dreams just changed.

Despite his normal hyperalertness, the sun was long since up and the Captain (Steve. He should think of his best friend by his proper name. And himself, for that matter. He had a name now!) had already been for a run and been back long enough to shower and retrieve a mountain of food from the hotel's continental breakfast by the time that Bucky dragged himself out of bed. He didn't feel any more rested than when he'd lain down the night before, and movement was pain, and he was too queasy to actually want food, but he got up anyway because he felt uneasy lying abed.

"Hey! Have some breakfast. What do you want to do today? I was planning on driving to New York today, but if you want to stay here I'm going to stay too. I've been for my run already, but I'm up for going again if you want to. Or hitting the gym, or..."

"No." Bucky cut him off, "Nothing physical." Feeling Steve's eyes on him, he grudgingly picked up a piece of toast and nibbled on it.

"Okay. Well, would you come with me to New York? Please? You don't have to fly or deal with people or anything, we'll drive up and I'll keep telling you stories on the drive to try to get your memory back then?" Steve asked hopefully. "And we'd be staying in a much more secure place. I bet you'd like that."

Bucky wanted to protest that he didn't deserve the kindness and withdraw back to the streets and his half-baked plans of revenge, but safety and rest were too tempting and Steve would probably keep begging until he gave in anyway and he didn't have the energy for that. "Alright." He conceded. "Where _are_ we going?"

"Avengers Tower." Steve beamed. "Tony decided my old apartment wasn't secure enough, so he had all my things moved there while I was on the run from Hydra. I wish he'd _asked_ , but after that mess I do agree that it's better for me to live in a more secure place, away from civilians." _And one wall was full of bullet holes, courtesy of you, but I'm not going to mention **that**._ "Anyway, we've all got a private floor of our own, and there are shared common spaces and labs and a gym and all sorts of things downstairs. Plus all sorts of secret entrances so we can avoid the fans at the front door when we want."

"Wow."

"I can show you around."

Nope. Nopenopenope. Not ready to stop hiding. Especially not when he was feeling so battered and wiped out. Not happening. "How about not just yet? Your teammates probably don't like me much. Besides, we've got a lot of memories for you to help me regain." Bucky forced himself to start on another piece of toast because he could tell Steve was paying attention to how much he was eating. "When do we leave?"

"Excited to get back to good old New York City?"

 _Mostly I'm exhausted and already need to sit down again, but yeah let's go with that._ "Yeah. That's where we used to live, right?"

\----

The next night was worse than the last. Was the tower colder than the hotel or something? Bucky couldn't seem to get warm, and he kept jolting upright in bed in a cold sweat, upper body screaming dizzyingly in pain at the movement, thinking that he'd seen someone in the shadows. Finally at four thirty he gave up and went looking for where Steve's extra blankets might be stashed.


	3. Chapter 3

He was still in the war. Zola was experimenting on him. It had all been a dream; he was flat on his back, something restricting his movement, an IV in his hand pumping god knew what into him. The terror was overwhelming even though he knew escape was futile. His body was acting on its own, scrambling to get out of the bed and get the IV out of his hand, but almost instantaneously there was someone straddling him, pinning him firmly down.

"BUCKY. Stop fighting. Shhh. Shh. It's me. It's Steve. Calm down. You're safe. Stop trying to move. You're going to hurt yourself. Shhh. Bucky, stop fighting. It's me. You're safe. BRUCE. SEDATIVE. Shh, Bucky! Calm down! You're safe here. Stop struggling, you're going to hurt yourself."

He fought the effects of the sedative for a moment, but it overwhelmed him rapidly and he sank back into the pillows, limbs too heavy to move and racing thoughts slowed. Pillows. Bed. He knew the man holding him down. Yes. That was Steve. He wasn't being experimented on. He was in bed, shirtless, all sorts of bandages and tape and things on his torso and shoulders, an IV in his remaining hand, feeling like he'd been run over by a tank.

"You okay now, Bucky?" Steve asked him. "Can I safely let go of you?"

Bucky drowsily dragged his eyes to Steve's face. "Yeah. 'M okay now." He mumbled, "What 'appened?"

Steve lightly dismounted the bed and sat down on the edge to wipe the sweat from his friend's forehead with a damp cloth. "I found you unconscious in the hall. Called Bruce to come help me--he's a doctor--and we got you stabilized. Are you aware you've got bruising and pulled muscles in your right shoulder, six broken ribs, and significant tearing on the left side of your chest where your flesh attaches to the metal arm?"

"Yeah. 'S just a flesh wound. Metal's anchored to the bone. Got pulled funny at some point."

"I'm guessing a strong shearing force at just the wrong spot at some point when the helicarrier was collapsing around you. That attachment point would be a weak spot. " Bruce contributed, coming over to take his vital signs. JARVIS could have done it remotely, but Bucky probably wasn't ready for the AI just yet. "Nice to meet you Bucky, I'm Bruce. Your chest wound is infected and you seem to also be experiencing withdrawal from whatever drugs Hydra routinely used on you, so I'd imagine you feel pretty rotten right now. I've treated your injuries and infection and we're going to try to manage your withdrawal symptoms as best we can to keep you comfortable, but you're going to be on bed rest and IV medications for a bit and restricted activity for a while after that. You're really lucky that Steve found you when he did and brought you here where you have safe access to medical care. Now, if you're feeling like you can handle it, I'd like to take a look at your chest and make sure you didn't pull out any stitches just now."

"M'kay." The air felt too heavy to resist. He might as well let them do whatever.

Bruce tactfully retreated with a promise to check in again in a few hours once he'd reassured himself that Bucky's stitches were intact. Steve immediately rounded on his friend.

"You want to talk about that?"

"Not really." Steve gave him a hurt look. It worked; Bucky gave in, as he probably always had even if he didn't remember it. "...I thought Zola was experimenting on me." He admitted.

Steve was instantly at his side. "Oh my god." He paused a moment, then kicked off his shoes and climbed onto the bed, easing himself in so that Bucky was halfway in his lap. "Oh Bucky. You're safe now. Nobody is ever going to do that to you again. I'd rip them apart with my bare hands if anyone tried."

Maybe it was how sick he felt, or how tired, or emotionally raw, or how drugged out he was, or how warm Steve was, but Bucky didn't have it in him to complain about being held. He was too weak to do anything but turn his head slightly to bury his face in his friend's shirt. Steve let him.

After a moment Steve spoke. "That's not what I would have preferred you remember, but you are remembering things. Overall, that's a good sign." Idly he began running his fingers through Bucky's long hair.

"Yeah." Bucky mumbled into the soft flannel. "S'pose so."

"How much do you remember now?"

"C'nceptionally I know who we are, an'… you evoke the feelings that I think you're s'posed to evoke in me. Actual memories are pretty foggy 'n' patchy though."

"That's progress. Is it helping when I tell you stories?"

"Yeah."

"Do you want to hear more stories now?"

"Wanna sleep." Bucky instinctively nestled in tighter to the warm body holding him, dignity and guilt be damned. He was too out of it to muster a flying fuck to give just now. "Yer warm."

"And you probably are suffering chills." Steve pulled the covers up higher around him. "Do you want a bedtime story so you dream of happy memories not bad ones?"

" 'Kay."

"There was one time when we were about twelve that we skipped school to go to the circus..."

_"Come on Bucky!" Steve exclaimed, trying to drag his bigger friend faster. "I think I can see the tent!"_

_Bucky rolled his eyes and tightened his grip on Steve's jacket sleeve. "Slow down before you give yourself an asthma attack or faint or something. We don't wanna attract attention."_

_Steve slowed down a little. "Are we gonna get in trouble?"_

_Bucky rolled his eyes and shot his friend a sly grin. "Don't worry. Nobody's gonna notice you skipped school. You're out sick so much nobody even says anything about it to your ma anymore. She thinks you're at school and Miss Collins will assume you're at home in bed and neither one will ever be the wiser. Now," He looked at the tent critically, "Only adult left to sneak this past is the ticket seller."_

_Steve eyed it too. "Tent's up against a wall on one side. Do you think we could get over it and under the tent flap?"_

_"That's a bit tall. But if I give you a boost up to the top at that spot where it's missing a bit, then I should be able to climb that tree over there and get from that branch onto the top of the wall myself..."_

"...so the circus actually ended up being really good, and to this day I think that trick pony is still my all-time favorite performer." Steve finished, looking down fondly at his lapful of drugged cuddly sick assassin. Bucky was fast sleep, seemingly peacefully, and Steve was effectively pinned down. There were worse fates.

\----

Waking again triggered another wave of terror, but Bucky fought it. He was groggy, but he _knew_ he was safe. He _knew_ that. He _wasn't_ being experimented on. The IV in his hand was there because he was _sick_. It was _fine_. Nothing was going to hurt him here. Right?

Someone was rubbing his remaining arm. "Breathe, Bucky. You're alright. You're safe. Relax. Just breathe. Nice and steady."

A long-forgotten memory stirred. Him kneeling over Steve, tiny little pre-serum Steve, rubbing his back and saying almost the same words as Steve fought an asthma attack.

Steve. Yes. That was Steve talking to him now. He opened his eyes, fully oriented again. "You've stolen my line."

That surprised a laugh out of Steve. "Yes, I suppose I have. You remember?"

"Yeah, I do. A little anyway. Boy were you a pipsqueak."

"Jerk."

"Punk." The retort popped out automatically. Steve's expression told him it had been the right thing to say.

Steve fondly brushed a tendril of hair out of his face, a poorly disguised excuse to feel his forehead. "How're you feeling?"

"Like I only got run over by half a tank."

"That'll be the drugs working. It'll take a while for the antibiotics to actually get rid of the infection, but Bruce said the other stuff in the cocktail he mixed up for you should decrease your symptoms a lot. Keep your blood pressure up and your fever down and counteract unpleasant withdrawal symptoms and stuff."

"So feeling better _doesn't_ mean I can get this stupid needle out of me?" Bucky didn't mean to let a pleading tone creep into his voice, but Steve picked up on it anyway.

"I don't remember you being scared of... Oh. That's what's triggering you, isn't it? The IV. Because of the experimental serums they tested on you."

"Sorry." He felt so stupid. He shouldn't let a little needle have this effect on him. He was a grown man and a soldier for fuck's sake. But it _was_ bothering him. It was bothering him a _lot_. He couldn't even look at it, and every time he thought about it all he could think about was being strapped to that table, being experimented on. And now he _was_ thinking about it, and he _knew_ it was over and he was safe, but he couldn't _not_ think about it.

Steve clearly picked up on his thought process, because he pulled his friend the rest of the way into his lap and held him as tightly as he safely could. "Nothing to be sorry about. You have every right to be traumatized and scared."

"Just gotta deal with it. Not like I have a choice."

"We can make it easier though." Steve told him. "If you're willing to accept our help, that is. We won't force you to do anything. But if you want, Bruce can get you some anti-anxiety pills to take while you still need the IV to help you feel less scared by it, and my friend Sam is a counselor with the VA and I bet he'd be happy to come work with you on dealing with that fear and all the stuff you've been through." Bucky made a scornful noise. Steve rolled his eyes. He'd seen that one coming. "Won't make you do it, just want you to know that the option is there and nobody will think any less of you if you take it."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't like that Bucky looks not quite like his tough self these first few chapters, because I'm definitely in the camp of him not being some emotionally broken wreck. He's a fighter. But on the other hand, we know Hydra drugged him (for instance, in the bank vault scene in TWS, there are two IV bags hung, suggesting that they were giving him more than just fluids in that scene and I'd presume did so routinely) so he most likely would experience withdrawal symptoms after escaping, he got the crap beat out of him on that helicarrier between Steve and the fallen beams, and Sebastian Stan has stated that he studied veterans with PTSD to prepare for the role. So it's a safe bet that despite being one tough cookie Bucky would not be feeling too good shortly after the end of the movie and would have PTSD even if it isn't always visible.
> 
> Also yes I know therapists aren't supposed to treat people they know. But Steve grew up in a time when your doctor was also your neighbor and made house calls at all hours and all that and psych wasn't a field people really ever came in contact with, so Sam occasionally has to remind him.


	4. Chapter 4

Steve's phone lit up on the nightstand. Bucky swiveled his head around to see the source of the sudden illumination so fast it tweaked his shoulder.

"Just my phone. I have a new text message from someone." Steve picked up the phone. "JARVIS? Since when do you send people texts?"

A new message popped up. _I did not wish to alarm Sgt. Barnes before you had a chance to warn him about me_.

"Who's JARVIS?" Bucky was craning his neck to see Steve's phone. Sgt. Barnes; that was him. The reminder that he was a _person_ with a _full name _and a _title_ felt nice if still a little strange. "And why do I need to be warned about him?"__

__"He's the artificial intelligence who runs the tower, a sort of bodiless robot butler. The disembodied voice can be a little unnerving at first, so apparently he was refraining from speaking around you until I warned you." He raised an eyebrow at his friend cheekily. "You must've looked jumpy."_ _

__"...thanks?"_ _

__"Anyway, JARVIS, what is it?"_ _

__"Mr Stark wishes me to, I quote, 'harass Capsicle until he comes out here and socializes with the man who was nice enough to give him lodging'."_ _

__"Yeah, because he totally gave me a choice in the matter."_ _

__"His words, not mine."_ _

__Bucky was looking up at Steve quizzically. "Howard is still around? I thought he had died." He hesitated, frowning. "I don't know why I thought that."_ _

__"He did. His son Tony is my teammate and the owner of this tower."_ _

__"Oh. And he wants you to go socialize? Also, _Capsicle_?"_ _

__"Yes, he does. He likes to give people annoying nicknames. Don't go getting any ideas."_ _

__"If the man hosting us wants you to go socialize, you probably should. Don't wanna be ungrateful." Bucky squirmed gingerly out of Steve's lap. "Go on. I need a nap anyway. And if we've got an omnipresent robot butler, you don't need to worry about me. He can keep an eye on me for you. Right?"_ _

__"Certainly." JARVIS assured them._ _

__"If you're sure." Steve extracted himself the rest of the way. Bucky was right. Tony was nice enough to give him a home, the least he could do was show his face in the common area once in a while. "Stay put. JARVIS, don't hesitate to summon me if he needs me, whether or not he admits to needing me." Bucky made a face. Steve ignored it. "Sleep well, Bucky."_ _

__\----_ _

__"Well if it isn't the star spangled hermit. Busy moping about your brainwashed buddy?" Tony quipped._ _

__Steve refused to rise to the jab. "Actually no. I found him."_ _

__Tony blinked, taken aback. "And I suppose you brought him home, didn't you? Where is he then?"_ _

__"Upstairs taking a nap with JARVIS keeping an eye on him. He's hurt and sick and traumatized, so don't pressure him to be too social just yet." Steve warned._ _

__"Remembers who he is though, isn't going to kill us?" Tony said it jokingly, but Steve knew him well enough now to hear the genuine concern behind it._ _

__"Not unless you startle him and he lashes out." Steve sat down heavily. "He _is_ regaining his memories, good and bad. And he was forced to do a lot of very bad things while brainwashed."_ _

__"God, talk about PTSD." Tony said softly. "Even _I_ can't make a joke about that, and I'm sure I don't even know half the stuff he must've done under their control. I'd better stock up on nightmare cocoa." The two sat in heavy silence for a minute, then Tony spoke again, more tentatively than Steve had ever heard from him. "I suppose he knows a lot of Hydra secrets, or will once he remembers them, then?"_ _

__"Possibly." Steve sighed. "I know what you're wondering Tony. Yes, Hydra was responsible for your parents' car accident. Nat and I found that out while we were on the run."_ _

__Tony fiddled with a pen nervously. "Do you think he was involved? I mean, he was an assassin and stuff and… yeah."_ _

__Steve cringed inwardly. "Possibly. He had a feeling that your father had died, but didn't know how he knew that, and the way he said it, I don't know, it felt like maybe he was either present or someone said something in front of him. Please don't be angry at him. You know that even if he was involved he was brainwashed and not in control."_ _

__Tony nodded stiffly. "Yeah. I-I know." He massaged his temples with shaky hands. "He was trapped inside a weapon. It wasn't really him. It's, it's like when Vanko took control of the War Machine suit with Rhodey inside, except...more rape-y." He braced himself. "I just...when he remembers, I want to know what happened. I need closure. Because none of it makes sense. It looked like an accident, no evidence of foul play, but no _reason_ for the accident, and you just confirmed that little voice I had in the back of my head saying it _was_ foul play, but that still leaves missing pieces. I need to know."_ _

__Steve nodded. "I respect that. But please be gentle when you bring it up, for both your sakes. Your father was a friend to us, and just...try to imagine what that will be like for him, discovering that one of the people he killed under Hydra's control might have been one of his own friends."_ _

__"Like Clint after Loki. Except worse. Because eventually he'll remember doing it instead of just having been told by someone else."_ _

__"Sounds about right."_ _

__"He's going to be gunning for revenge even more than the rest of us, isn't he?"_ _

__"God, I hope so. It'll be either that or too traumatized to function, and I'm really hoping for the revenge option."_ _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I like my version of Tony finding out better than the MCU canon. They've seen mind control before. They've seen people being forced to attack their friends before. It's not a foreign concept to them. And Tony finding out sort of gradually allows him time to come to terms with the idea as a possibility before potentially finding out the answer. Also the fact that this fic picks up after TWS and therefore AOU hasn't happened means Tony's not guilt-tripped into siding with the government by his role in that incident. So yeah I like this better. :) Which isn't to say this isn't a lot for him to swallow.


	5. Chapter 5

"Mr Stark would like to know if the two of you are feeling up to watching a movie with him." JARVIS informed them when Steve wrapped up the latest story about one of Bucky's failed attempts to find Steve a date. "In here, of course."

"What movie is he thinking?" Steve asked skeptically. "And how do you feel about that, Buck?"

Bucky considered it. He didn't want Steve to neglect his friends for him, he didn't deserve that, but he knew Steve was hesitant to leave his side, so he was going to have to face his nerves and meet Steve's friends. "I guess. I mean, if you trust him. It's his house and he's your teammate and you did a good job picking your last team."

"You remember the Commandos?" Steve grinned.

"Only very fuzzily. But my gut feeling is you picked well."

"Gut feeling is something. What movie, JARVIS?"

"I recommended the new Alice In Wonderland. I do not predict that it will trigger anyone."

"What do you think?" Steve asked Bucky.

"Sure. I think I like movies."

"Yes, you always liked movies when we were kids."

Tony almost announced his presence at the bedroom door in his usual loud manner, but stopped to observe instead. Honestly, yes, he was nervous, even after hours of experimenting with every meditation technique that Bruce and JARVIS had suggested to him to clear his mind and process the new information about his parents' accident. He knew it hadn't been _Bucky_ that killed his parents and he was forcing himself to remember that, but the two shared a body and he didn't know how he'd react to seeing that shared body even with the knowledge that the person inhabiting it wasn't the assassin. Not that he looked like a killer at the moment; quite the opposite. Spangles was sitting on the bed next to his old friend, so close they were practically in each other's laps. They were talking about movies they'd seen as kids, or rather Steve was doing most of the talking and Bucky was occasionally asking if that was the one where such-and-such happened. The sleek metal arm had Tony itching to examine it even more up close than it had in the photos he'd seen, but even that wasn't enough to distract him from the visceral horror that he felt seeing the body attached to it. The fearsome assassin, the fist of Hydra, looked awful. Not at all like the menacing figure in the photos, the one he imagined killing his parents. Which did help, but yikes. He was lying flat in bed, flushed with fever, a drip in his remaining hand (which he seemed to be pointedly _not_ looking at; never let it be said that Tony Stark lacked powers of observation, he just usually barreled through his interactions with people because truth be told he didn't really know how to act on those observations most of the time) and the parts of his chest and the top of his remaining arm not covered by bandages were a patchwork of rainbow bruising and angry red swelling. It was rare that Tony felt guilty about imposing himself on people, but the guy really looked like crap, like maybe for him a movie night _would_ qualify as strenuous activity.

Steve noticed him first. "Hi Tony. You were already waiting to be let in by the time JARVIS asked us if we were up for a movie, weren't you?"

Tony swallowed his thoughts and gave them a cheesy grin. "You bet your frozen ass I was. You two old farts ready to experience some Tim Burton weirdness?"

Bucky turned his head to look at him and froze, eyes (an even _more_ striking shade than Steve's; Tony was impressed that that was possible) wide and focused on him but not on him.

That face, the features, the hair. That looked a lot like Howard.

A vaguely familiar face, seen through the windshield of a car coming at him as he coolly aimed the gun.

A look of horror, confusion, somehow different. Familiar how? Different from what? The Soldier didn't know or care. The car was his mission and those thoughts weren't permitted.

The car swerving, hard. Crashes of metal on metal and then metal on rock.

Looking down from a high place at a smoldering wreck of a car below.

"Bucky!" Steve's voice was calling his name, hand cupping his cheek. "Breathe, Buck. You're okay. What's wrong? We don't have to do this if you're not ready for other people. I promise it's okay."

Oh god. Howard.

"Bucky, talk to me, please. I can ask him to go away if..."

"I killed him." He managed to whisper, horrified.

Steve gathered him in his arms, limp and unresisting with shock. "Yeah, Buck, we know. We put it together. But it wasn't really you though. They hijacked your body and mind, stuffed their mindless killer in and tried to crowd you out. And you fought them, for seventy goddamn years, until you broke free. You never gave up."

Putting the pieces together, Tony came over and sat on the bed next to the stricken assassin, his own remaining unease overcome by the clear demonstration of the trauma of the realization. "Yeah, seriously dude. We already figured out that you were probably involved in my parents' car accident. If it makes you feel better, nobody found any signs of ballistics or explosives or anything, not on them, not on the car, nothing, so you didn't, like, blow them up. You at least left us bodies to bury."

Their host's bluntness shocked him somewhat back to rational thought. Bucky furrowed his brow, memory dancing at the edges of his reach. "I...don't think I ever fired my weapon." He said slowly, confusion seeping into his horror. "I don't remember firing it. I was standing in the road. I was _ready_ to fire it, follow orders. He swerved. They always swerve, or brake, or something, when they see me in front of them. Or I think they do. But he swerved hard. More than they usually do. He hit the guardrail. I think it gave way."

"Yes." Tony could see the police report as if it were yesterday. "The car went through the guardrail and rolled down a steep rocky slope. No evidence of foul play was ever found. The police concluded he must have fallen asleep at the wheel."

"You can't blame yourself for it. Not only were you nothing but a puppet, you didn't even actually fire your weapon, and for all we know, when it came down to it you might well have not been able to do it. You were just _there_." Steve carded his fingers through Bucky's messy hair soothingly. Not like Bucky was going to believe him, but he could _try_.

"It's really not actually your fault." Tony told him bluntly, surprising himself with how earnestly he actually believed what he was saying. Because he _did_ believe it. Because it _made sense_ in a way that no other explanation had. "Much as I would like to have a person to blame. He swerved and went through a guardrail because while driving late at night--and yes, probably technically too tired to be behind the wheel and mentally checked out--he was startled by seeing a ghost. It probably wasn't even the gun in your hands. He knew you in the army, so the sight of a gun in your hands wouldn't be out of the ordinary at all. He _saw a fucking ghost_ , and he jumped out of his skin and went off the road."

Bucky looked up at him, clearly startled, and it hit Tony for the first time how _young_ the two supersoldiers in front of him were. Yes, they were technically well into in their 90s, but with all the time they both spent on ice...physically, mentally, amount-of-living-wise, they were actually only in their mid-20s, maybe 30. Significantly younger than him. That was an uncomfortable thought.

"Really, kid. Even _I_ can't blame you, and these are my own parents we're talking about. Tell you a secret, a nasty piece of work took remote control of one of my iron man suits while my best friend was inside it and tried to use it to kill me." He took a slightly shaky breath. "Hurts and all, but puppet, puppeteer, you get the picture. Now, if we're done with feelings, you still up to watch a movie?"

"You're very calm." Bucky looked confused and haunted and like he was expecting someone to hurt him. The unsettling thought crossed both of the others' minds that he probably _was_.

"I have closure now. And honestly, I've spent the past 20-some years imagining some unmarked van coming flying out of nowhere and ramming them off the road. Dad swerving because he saw a ghost is easier to be at peace with than that."

Bucky nodded, a little stiffly. "I'm sorry your parents died, and I'm sorry for my part in it, even if you don't blame me for it. Howard was a good man."

"You remember him?" Despite his rocky relationship with his father, Tony perked up slightly. He wished, deep down, buried under his devil-may-care shell, that he could have known the man that Cap sometimes talked about, the young man who wasn't yet bitter and distant.

"It's fragmented, but some. Especially after seeing you. You look like him. It jogs my memory a bit." Bucky paused. "It's a little weird for me seeing you."

"You're more like him than you know." Steve added. "We got to watch Colonel Phillips ream him out..."

"...for scaring the shit out of everybody by causing an explosion on base playing with some Hydra tech that Steve liberated from the factory where my unit was held captive." Bucky finished for him automatically, smiling slightly at the memory. "Was that what you were going to say?"

"I was going to say unauthorized stunt flying demonstrations using military aircraft, but that's quite applicable too."


	6. Chapter 6

He was not going to wake Steve up. He wasn't. He could handle nightmares. Right? Yeah. So no. So long as his nightmares weren't loud enough to wake Steve in the next room, Steve didn't need to know about them.

Bucky stared at the ceiling, willing his heart rate back down. He was safe, wasn't he? His memory might be very patchy, but he _just knew_ certain things, and that he did in fact share the connection with Steve that the museum and Steve's stories indicated was one of them. It was a deep emotional muscle memory of sorts, so strong that it had allowed him to break through 70 years of repeated brainwashing and Hydra programming. Yes. He was safe, even if it was hard to remember sometimes. It was over. He wasn't Hydra's pawn anymore.

He kept remembering snippets of his time with them. Those were going to haunt him forever, weren't they? This wouldn't be the last night that he would be woken by shocked faces seen through windshields moments before their cars exploded (or swerved off the road, oh god, he'd played a role in the death of at least one person he knew and liked, how many more?) playing on loop. This wouldn't be the last time that he would struggle to tolerate medical treatment that he knew he needed because it reminded him of things Hydra had done to him. (That stupid drip. There had been a lot of those with Hydra.)

He wasn't going to get back to sleep any time soon, was he? The downside of being less sick now, a few days (At least? He thought? Sleeping so much had his sense of time completely messed up.) into treatment was that he wasn't too out of it to notice how sore he was anymore. There was absolutely no way to get comfortable, and shifting positions was painful to impossible with one arm strapped in place to stop the stitches in his chest from pulling and the other shoulder strained and bruised to all hell from being dislocated and him having had to pop it back in himself rather inexpertly. Even with Steve's efforts to help him get in slightly different positions at every opportunity, Bucky ached all over. He needed a hot water bottle or five. Or a pet. Or a warm solid bedfellow. Why was he even thinking that? He'd fallen asleep on top of Steve a couple of times in the past few days, and suddenly he couldn't sleep without him? Ugh. That was pathetic.

He needed a distraction. Would that robot butler be awake? Robots didn't need sleep, right? "Hey, um, hey JARVIS?" He asked softly.

"Yes sir?"

"Did I wake you?"

"I am never asleep. Do you wish me to fetch Captain Rogers or Doctor Banner for you?"

"No, I'm fine, let them sleep. I was just wondering if you had any pictures relating to my life before, you know, all this."

"Certainly sir." A holographic screen came up in front of him and a holographic keyboard appeared by his hand, close enough that he could use it without moving his shoulder, causing his jaw to drop. The future was _amazing_. "I am pulling up images of 1920s, 30s, and 40s Brooklyn, and anything I can find of the Howling Commandos or members thereof dated any time prior to your disappearance for you and Captain Rogers and prior to then but after joining the army for the other members."

"Thanks."

\----

Steve refrained from throwing a pillow at the wall for the sole reason that he didn't know how enhanced Bucky's hearing might be and didn't want to risk waking him. The poor guy needed all the sleep he could get. He had a lot of healing to do, and it wasn't his fault his best friend was an insomniac.

Well. That was arguable. Steve never slept well without Bucky, and technically it had been Bucky's fault that they'd had to begin sharing a bed way back in 1940 in the first place.

"You appear frustrated by being awake. Would you like me to play soothing music, sir?"

"No, thanks JARVIS, but I don't want to risk waking Bucky."

"Sergeant Barnes has been awake for the past half hour."

"Is he doing okay? You should have told me." Steve sat up quickly.

"He is fine. He is looking at old photos."

\----

"Hey."

Bucky looked away from the screen, showing a photo of the Commandos playing keep-away with Dum-Dum's hat. "Did JARVIS wake you up? I told him I was fine."

"No, I was awake. I declined his offer to put on music because I didn't want to wake you, and he told me you were awake too."

"Were you always an insomniac?" Bucky tried to remember.

"Only after you set my bed on fire, and only when you weren't around." Steve quipped drily.

Bucky raised an eyebrow. "You're messing with me."

"Really. We got in the habit of sleeping curled up against each other after you set my bed on fire, and then when you shipped out for the war I discovered that I didn't know how to sleep _not_ curled up against you anymore."

Well, that would explain why _he_ was having trouble sleeping alone too. "I'm guessing we lived together then?"

"Yeah, we had an apartment together for a few years, in Brooklyn. I tried to resist moving in together, but money got tight after both our parents died because I was too sickly to work enough to pay all my bills on top of paying for meds, and you were paying off debts left from your father's accident. He'd gotten hurt bad working construction and spent a couple weeks in the hospital before he died, ran up a bill. So we moved in together so we could pool our money for rent and food and stuff. Tiny little place, not much in it. We didn't care though. We had each other and a roof over our heads and food on the table, and we paid our bills, if only barely, and that was better than a lot of people."

Bucky could picture that. At least a little bit. "Did we have a cat?"

Steve sat down on the edge of the bed. "Yeah, kind of. We'd put out a saucer of milk for a stray that hung around, a little tabby, and eventually she decided that she lived with us. Kept the rodents out of our pantry. I always knew when you got home from work, because she would be sleeping on top of me and then suddenly launch herself off to go greet you."

"I remember that. Didn't she drop a mouse in my oatmeal one morning?"

Steve snickered. "Yes, and you shrieked like a little girl."

"I'm going to regret asking, but how exactly did I set your bed on fire?" Bucky hurriedly changed the subject.

"You fished a newfangled portable heater out of some rich guy's trash and attempted to install it under my bed without considering that if he was throwing out an expensive heater in the middle of winter then there was probably something very wrong with it."

"At least I was trying to keep your skinny ass warm!" Bucky protested.

"That does not change the fact that you set my bed on fire." Steve retorted. "Anyhow, you look uncomfortable. Anything I can do?"

"Just sore and achy. It's hard to get comfortable."

"Let's try something, if you're okay with it." Steve moved around to the right side of the bed and pushed the IV pole over left of center behind the headboard. "Budge up." He helped Bucky roll halfway onto his left side and positioned himself behind and underneath so that his friend's back was pressed against his stomach and his arm was loosely around Bucky's waist below the level of his cracked ribs. "How's that feel? Not hurting anything? Different position and human hot water bottle help at all?"

"Yeah. It does help." Bucky blushed a little in the darkness. It felt right, but it was supposed to be wrong, but it felt so good to shift his weight onto different pressure points. "This was normal for us?"

"Well, you were always the big spoon when I was tiny, and after I grew, you curled up and pressed against me instead of wrapping around me."

"We did this in the army." Bucky was skeptical.

"Not on base. And not on purpose. When we were camping out with the Commandos, we'd all sleep close for warmth. We'd go to sleep next to each other but not touching, like everyone else, and apparently first you would curl up in a ball and nestle into my back for warmth, and then a while later I would roll over and wrap around you. That's what whoever had been on guard duty that night would always describe, and that _is_ how we'd always wake up."

"And nobody minded?"

"Not really. They teased us plenty, but you telling them to enjoy their frostbite usually shut them up."

Bucky laughed a little and allowed himself to relax against Steve. This did feel familiar. "...And then Monty actually did get frostnip and Jim pretended like he was gonna cut off his toes and the next night we all ended up like a pile of puppies." It was more of a guess than a memory, but most of his memories were like that lately, so it was probably true.

"Yup. I'm glad you're starting to remember."

"Any of them still around?"

"I'd have to check. I think I heard that Gabe and Frenchie had passed away. And Peggy is in a nursing home with severe Alzheimer's. Went to visit her once, but she forgets that I'm alive and we're in the middle of a conversation every time she so much as looks away, and that hurt enough that I've been too much of a coward to try to track down the others."

"You've never been a coward, Stevie. Always had more balls than brains, like a yappy little dog chasing cars."

"You're a jerk." Steve stifled a yawn.

"And you're a punk." Bucky closed his eyes and soaked up the solid warmth pressed against his back. "Go to sleep."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So yes, portable heaters did exist at the time. I checked. They were a new invention at the time, hence a faulty enough to start a fire one getting fished out of some rich guy's trash. Also I have the head canon that although Bucky doesn't particularly like fire, fire really likes Bucky.


	7. Chapter 7

"Relieved?" Bruce eyed Bucky's fixed gaze on the wall. "You can look again, you know. The IV is gone."

"Oh. Thank you doctor." Bucky schooled his face straight. Wouldn't do to seem as though he'd been frightened by the stupid thing. Nope. Of course he hadn't.

"You're welcome. Now, these are more or less the pill form of what you've been on, minus a few things that we've been tapering you off. These ones are antibiotics, and you need to take them twice a day with food. These are painkillers, and you should take them as needed."

"And if I think you're purposely not taking them in an attempt to punish yourself, you'll go back on the drip." Steve added sweetly. Bucky shot him a venomous glare, which Steve ignored. "Also can he get wet yet? He hasn't bathed or shaved in like a week, and we'd like to pretend we're civilized people around here."

"I'd smack you if I weren't pretty sure that's against doctor's orders." Bucky grumbled.

"Yes it is, and yes I think the chest wound is healed enough you can bathe safely. You will need some assistance though because your range of motion is still limited." Bruce gathered up his supplies and headed out. "Don't wear yourself out too much."

"I think I'll just stay smelly and uncivilized." Bucky informed Steve primly, sitting back against the headboard and opening a book in his lap.

"What-Bucky! What is up with you? You were always Mr Dapper, had to have your shoes shined and your hair full of pomade and your shirts fit just right. No. I don't believe for a second that you _like_ being unwashed."

"Well maybe I'm not the same person I was." Bucky shot back, mentally wincing even as he said it. That was harsh.

Steve tugged the book out of his hands and knelt on the bed in front of him, straddling his legs. "What is it really. Don't lie. I can tell something's up when you go from affectionately giving me crap to total cactus in a second."

"I don't want help."

"I know, Buck, nobody likes needing help with stuff, especially basic self-care. But we grew up together and we've lived together and fought together and bathed in rivers together. I've seen you naked plenty of times before."

"I know. I don't care about that."

"So what is it then?"

_Rough hands stripping him, businesslike. Scrubbing him down with a bucket and a rag, like a muddy cart horse, as he stood there. Motionless because they had not given him permission to move._

"Don't want to."

_A handler grabbing him by the hair at the nape of his neck and wrenching his head back. Lathering his face, pulling a cheap razor over it with no care for the nicks and razor burn left in its path, yanking his head around by his hair when they wanted to change its position._

"I can _see_ your defenses going up. Please talk to me."

_Lewd comments about his body, as if he weren't even there. Suggestions of having a little fun since the boss was busy elsewhere and he would be wiped again before he would have a chance to tell on them. Hot wax thrown on him and ripped off, accompanied by snickers. Someone rolling up the wet rag into a whip and snapping it against his exposed legs and privates, backhanding him across the face if he flinched and then hitting him harder with it._

"Bucky, you're shaking. Please tell me what's wrong." Steve pushed his hair out of his face, stopping with his hand still lightly cupping the side of Bucky's face, tentative as if worried that he might lash out if Steve made any sudden moves.

"I don't want help. They... used to clean me, periodically."

"Ah. C'mere." Steve drew him into a hug. "Tell you what. I'll run you a bubble bath, and you have a soak and wash what you can reach, and then I'll come give you a hand with lathering up your hair, alright? If you don't have enough range of motion to shave-I'll bring you my electric razor to use so you don't have to worry about cutting yourself if you're having difficulty-then you don't have to. You can wait on that until you can do it yourself again."

Bucky buried his face into Steve's shoulder. "Please be gentle."

Steve rested his cheek on the top of Bucky's head and stroked his hair. "You know I will."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Obviously, not a smart move on the part of the Hydra lackeys who decided to have some fun while the boss wasn't paying attention. In 70 years somebody would have come along foolish enough to try it though. I mean, think about it. Hydra is a bunch of bullies and the ones being tasked with washing the weapon probably were fairly low on the totem pole and then here they are handed someone programmed not to fight back. At least one group of them in that length of time would have been dumb enough to pull this sort of stunt (and then paid dearly for it when somebody higher up found out).


	8. Chapter 8

The first time he ventured off of Steve's floor was a trip to the common area kitchen, because Pepper had baked chocolate cake and Steve said her chocolate cakes tasted a lot like his ma's did and that Bucky used to have a weakness for his ma's chocolate cake when they were kids, but he refused to go fetch a piece. Bucky was going to have to start leaving their floor (Bucky did not miss the fact that he said "our" and not "my", which might have something to do with why he agreed.) and interacting with people eventually, so if he wanted a piece of cake then he was going to have to fetch it in person. So he went, nerves jangling, but Steve's presence next to him a comfort.

He had hoped that by waiting until midnight to decide that he wanted cake he could avoid running into people, but that tactic didn't seem to work in Avengers Tower. Pepper and Bruce had gone to bed and Tony was back in his lab for the night, but Natasha and Clint were in the kitchen with their own pieces of cake, still in their dusty gear from a mission.

"Hey boys." Natasha greeted them around a mouthful of cake, tilting her head back to look at them upside down over the back of her chair. "You're late to the party. Much later and we wouldn't have left you any cake."

Bucky eyed her suspiciously. He'd shot her at least once. Was she going to want revenge? He wasn't exactly in fighting condition. As if sensing his anxiety, Steve's hand found the small of his back.

Seated on top of the fridge, Clint raised an eyebrow at the gesture. "Care to introduce us to your boyfriend, Cap?"

Bucky expected Steve to snatch his hand away at the implication, but he didn't. "Clint, Natasha, this is my best friend Bucky. They're also Avengers, and were SHIELD agents before that."

"Doing alright, Bucky?" Natasha asked, "You and Steve were punching the crap out of each other not too long ago, and he's got a mean swing. You do too, but I know he's got super healing and I don't know whether you do."

"I, um." Bucky stammered, caught off guard.

Steve grinned proudly. "Bucky was the one who first taught me to fight, you know."

"No wonder you're a match for each other." Natasha smirked a little. "Bucky, you look ready to bolt. Relax. I'm not planning on zapping you again."

Bucky shuddered, remembering the experience. "But...I shot you."

"Yeah, twice. Do it a third time and I'll shove a taser so far up your ass the next person you kiss will get shocked."

Clint snorted. "She will, too. Hey, have some cake, man, before I decide to finish it off myself."

Bucky's eyes darted between the cake and the people in the room. Steve gave him a light push. "Go for it. You don't need permission to eat."

Bucky caught Steve gaping at him when he looked up from cutting himself a slice. "..what?"

"I just realized that you actually _do_ wait for permission to eat. Since I found you again you've never expressed hunger or satiety. You eat whatever is offered to you, when I tell you to."

"Not always. I got hungry enough to steal food before you found me in the museum." Bucky mumbled through a mouthful of cake. Steve was right; this was really tasty.

Steve sighed. "If you need permission, I hereby give you permission to eat whenever and whatever you want."

"Geez Steve, are you trying to get him in trouble?" Clint hopped off the fridge. "Bucky, the pop tarts above the sink belong to Thor, and taking them would not be the way to start off on the right foot with him. If you want pop tarts, I advise getting them yourself and keeping them in your own kitchen to avoid confusion about whose you're eating."

"Duly noted. Don't touch the things in the cupboard over the sink. Whatever they are."

"Now come on guys." Clint picked up a huge shipping box from the corner. "I've been dying to do this, and you've gotta see it. This is gonna look awesome."

Natasha rolled her eyes, but got up anyway. "I still can't believe you spent 50 bucks on this."

"Shut up Nat, this is gonna be epic."

The others followed him out of the kitchen to the rarely-used stairwell. However cool Tony had thought it would be to have a tightly coiled spiral staircase down the entire height of the tower, it was impractical for such a tall building.

Except apparently for Clint's amusement. The box turned out to be full of at least 100 light-up bouncy balls, which Clint proceeded to empty down the stairs as the three of them leaned over the railing to watch the flashing lights ricochet around the seemingly endless twists.

Wait. Three. Steve turned around to see Bucky sitting on the stairs against the wall. "Come look at this, Bucky! It's like a light show."

Bucky eyed the opening in the center of the stairwell. "No thanks."

"You okay?" Steve sat down next to him. "Getting tired?"

"Not all that tired, I just hate heights."

Steve blinked in surprise. "Oh. Right. The train. I should have thought about that."

"Train?"

"You went missing by falling off a train and down a ravine while we were trying to capture Zola."

Bucky shuddered. "Thanks so much for the nightmare fodder, you ass."

"Sorry for reminding you. You know you can wake me up when you have nightmares. I certainly won't hold it against you. That fall would make anyone scared of heights."

"It didn't." Bucky looked confused.

"Huh?"

"I've been scared of heights since I was little, I think. Definitely before the war. I have the vague feeling that my cousin dangled me off a fire escape as a joke when I was like four." Bucky cocked his head and looked sideways at Steve, frowning. "Surely you knew that?"

"No. No, you never told me you were scared of heights." Steve rubbed his forehead. "God, Buck, I've made you do so much stuff up in high places over the years. Dragged you up onto roofs and fire escapes because I wanted to sketch things, made you go on Ferris wheels with me, top row of seats at the circus, made you stand guard while camping on ledges with the Commandos, made you walk across a support beam over a flaming chasm in that factory instead of finding another way out, made you zip line off a cliff onto the top of a moving train... Why didn't you ever _tell_ me you were scared of heights? Maybe not _all_ of those could have been avoided, but a _lot_ of them could. I wouldn't have minded."

"I don't think I really minded scaring myself silly doing things that made you happy all that much." Bucky squirmed awkwardly. "And the rest of the time I probably just wanted to look tough in front of you. You were always utterly fearless, despite being tiny and fragile. I was probably embarrassed to admit that I wasn't as brave as you."


	9. Chapter 9

"Nightmare cocoa? It's in the last cabinet on the left."

Bucky spun around, reaching for knives that he no longer had and drawing protest from his still-tender chest. "Ow. Hi. Clint, right?"

"Yep." Clint opened the cabinet in question. "Raspberry, mint, or hazelnut?"

"Raspberry."

Clint busied himself putting the kettle on and hunting down clean mugs. "Also, 'Ow'?"

"Moved too quick. Made my chest hurt."

"A 97-year-old with chest pain. Should I be worried?"

"No. I just had a helicarrier go to pieces with me on it a couple weeks ago and a support beam fall on me. Broke some ribs and tore my chest open. I'm not really supposed to be making any sudden movements or reaching for things or lifting things."

"Hey, but you're alive." Clint pushed a mug in his direction. "More than can really be expected in that situation."

"Yeah. Thanks to my stubborn idiot best friend fighting me, deliberately dislocating my shoulder, choking me out, pulling the beam off me even though I'd just shot him multiple times, and then daring me to kill him in an effort to restore my memory." Bucky shook his head. "And that moron outranks me."

"My best friend went looking for me and concussed me to break the mind control I was under instead of putting a bullet in my head like any other agent would have." Clint told him. "Not nearly as dramatic, but yeah. What are best friends for."

"You were mind controlled?"

Clint scowled. "Alien invasion led by a power-crazed god armed with that very same goddamn cube that Hydra was using to make weapons in your day."

"You're shitting me." Bucky looked at him incredulously as Clint filled his mug for him. "Thanks."

"Wish I was. Steve sure told us off for fishing the damn thing out of the ocean and trying to use it after he went to the trouble of losing it there."

"I don't blame him. Please tell me it's been destroyed properly this time."

"Thor--yes the Norse god--took it and his crazy brother back to their own realm." Bucky raised an eyebrow. Clint raised one right back. "Hydra inside SHIELD is not the weirdest thing that's happened in recent years. The world's fucking insane."

"Oh boy."

"You said it. And we are right in the epicenter of the insanity, surrounded by gods and enhanced and or mutated people and ridiculous geniuses. It's, yeah, it's superheroes and stuff." Clint dipped a finger in his cocoa to check the temperature. "I mean, Steve and his serum, Tony and his suits, Bruce and his transformation, Thor being a fucking _god_ , Nat and the things they did to her in the Red Room that even _she_ doesn't know what they were, and then there's me, ordinary human who happens to have some trick arrows."

"Wow." Bucky studied the grain of the tabletop intently. "They all sound so... perfect."

Clint snorted. "No. Did the fact that we have a shelf specifically for cocoa specifically for when we have nightmares not tip you off? We're pretty fucked up. And have you not noticed yet how much Cap hates cold things and wet things?"

Bucky made a face. "Ok, traumatized, yes. Soldiers have emotional scars."

"You feel like your metal arm will never be as good as your real arm was, no matter how superior it is to flesh and bone." Clint stated, no question in his voice.

Bucky looked startled. "How do you know that?"

Clint pulled one of his hearing aids out. "You have a bionic arm, I have bionic ears. These are ridiculously advanced and programmed to especially magnify certain sounds that are handy in this line of work. I can probably even hear someone sneaking up on me better than a normal person would. But yet I still feel like damaged goods. I still remember having functioning ears, and feel like these will never compare, even though technically they're better." He tucked the hearing aid back into his ear, and took a sip of his cocoa. "And if you need more convincing that you're no more of damaged goods than the rest of us, here are a few more examples. Bruce doesn't have full control over his transformations into a giant green rage monster, which was the result of a lab accident in the first place. Tony spent years with a battery sticking out of his chest to stop his chest-full of shrapnel from working its way into his heart. Nat doesn't get to choose whether or not she wants to have children in the future, because the Red Room deliberately sterilized her for the sake of efficiency."

Bucky took a long drink of his cocoa, almost too hot compared to his serum-lowered body temperature. "Perhaps you do understand." He paused. "I think I dreamt about it tonight, losing my arm. I was falling. I know I fell for real, a very long way down, right before Hydra captured me for the second time, so I'm guessing that's when it happened, and I know we spent a lot of time in the snow with the Howling Commandos. In the nightmare it was snowy and I was falling and falling it felt like forever."

"And that's how you ended up here, talking to someone you hardly know but gets how you're feeling." Clint smiled sadly.

Bucky shrugged and then winced as the movement caused his shoulder and chest to complain. "I didn't want to wake Steve over a stupid nightmare. Dumb punk was awake for two days straight on whatever secret mission he got talked into."

"It's not stupid. I still have nightmares about the mission where I lost my hearing." Bucky looked up at him, a question in his eyes. "Yeah, it was on a mission. Accident with a sonic arrow. I got tackled, didn't get out the window as I had intended before it went off. Woke up in the SHIELD infirmary with 80% hearing loss. That's what I dreamt about tonight, actually." Clint told him ruefully. "Scrambling to get away, and knowing I wasn't going to make it."

They both stared at their cocoa for a minute, and then Bucky broke the silence. "You keep talking about arrows."

"I'm a sniper. Mostly."

"I am too. Or I was in the war, anyway. Probably still am. I'm not really sure how much of which things I've done since then."

Clint looked at the clock. 3:48. There was no point in trying to get back to sleep tonight. "Want to hit the range for a little friendly competition? Weapons of choice?"

"That probably violates doctor's orders."

"Chicken?" Clint dared him.

Bucky narrowed his eyes. "Fine. You're on. But this is our little secret."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It drives me crazy that people think Natasha being sterile is like "oh, I'm a woman, babies are important to me" and pitch a fit. It has nothing to do with whether she wants children (and honestly I feel like she probably would choose not to) and everything to do with her **right to choose**. She may have gotten away from the KGB and most of the other effects and has control over her own life now, but that loss of ability to be the one to make that choice for her own body is a lasting effect of what was done to her.


	10. Chapter 10

Steve rolled over away from the sun streaming in the window and assaulting his eyes. He couldn't remember the last time he'd slept this late, but admittedly he'd needed it.

Daaamn. He'd slept so late that Bucky had gotten up rather than wait for him. That was impressive. But it also meant that Bucky had probably gotten up and eaten breakfast without prompting. Probably. That was good, right?

Except that he couldn't find Bucky anywhere on their floor. "...Hey JARVIS?"

"Sergeant Barnes is downstairs in the armory with Agent Barton."

"I'm predictable, huh?"

"Indeed."

"They're getting along though?" This was actually fantastic. Bucky was socializing willingly, and Clint and Bucky would be good for each other.

"Famously."

"Has he eaten?"

"Technically."

"Technically?"

"They have been stuffing themselves with candy bars."

Ok, so not proper food, but Steve would let Bucky get away with it this time. He'd probably never had modern candy before, and they'd certainly never gotten much candy when they were younger.

\----

"You beat me to it."

Natasha glanced up from the safe. "Only barely-- Ah, shit. Maria, got another hairpin?"

Hill handed one over. "Cap, do you want to start going through the loose things over there, see what you can figure out about them?"

"Yeah, sure." Steve pulled the first item off the pile. Round, silver, reminded him a little of Bucky's arm in the way it was marked. He wasn't sure what it was, but didn't want to prod it too much. "I'm going to put anything potentially explosive in the Hulk-testing room for the moment, okay?"

There was a soft click as the lock released under Natasha's skilled fingers. "Sounds good. Maybe we should be getting Bucky to help us here. He might actually know what a lot of this is."

Maria straightened. "You found him?"

"Yup. He's not a threat, I promise. I broke the brainwashing. I don't know if we should call him in for this though, he's got some serious PTSD. I don't want to trigger him."

Natasha flipped through a file pulled from the safe, before handing it off to Maria. "Notes from some sort of experiments. I'll translate them when we're done cataloging. He's a grown man, Steve. He can decide for himself whether he feels up to helping us." Something fell out from between two files and she picked it up. "Heeyyyyy. Steve, catch."

"Huh?" He caught the small object automatically and looked down at it. Dog tags. Not just dog tags. _Bucky's_ dog tags. He grinned, then frowned. Something felt off. He set them down on the table and took a step back suspiciously.

"Cap, what's wrong?" Maria was immediately at attention.

"I don't know. Something's not right."

"You think they're fake?" Natasha asked, joining them in suspiciously eyeing the dog tags. "Why would Hydra have made fake American dog tags for him?"

"I don't know. That's your territory more than mine. I just have a gut feeling that something about them isn't as it should be."

Natasha examined them. "They look authentic. Right sort of metal. Notched. Formatted correctly. James B Barnes--I'm assuming Bucky comes from his middle name--"

Steve nodded. "Buchanan."

"--Serial number makes sense for a guy from New York circa World War II. Tetanus shot dates make sense for when he would have joined--I don't suppose you would remember exactly when he would have gotten them--"

"I think they probably gave them to everyone on joining regardless of whether they'd had them before."

"So yes, that looks right. Do you know his blood type?"

"No." Steve admitted.

"JARVIS, do you know?"

"A-positive."

"That checks out. And his religion?"

"Parents were Protestant, but he never took it real seriously."

Natasha looked up. "It all checks out, Steve. If these are fakes then they're really good ones." She eyed Steve's wary expression. "You know what, let's see if we can't settle this. JARVIS, can you get Bucky to come take a look at these for us? And ask Clint and Tony and Bruce to give us a hand examining all these mystery objects too."

"He's still amnestic. Like he'd know if they're real." Steve protested.

"He might."

Bucky poked his head in the door. "JARVIS said you found my old dog tags?" Natasha pointed, and Bucky made a beeline for them.

Steve caught his arm. "Don't touch them. Something's not right."

Bucky peered at them. He could see them in his mind's eye, hanging around his neck. "No, they're mine. They're real." Ignoring Steve's warning, he put them on.

Steve reached over and covered the tags with his hand. "What religion would you have told them you were when you joined?"

"Protestant. You know that's what I was raised."

"Do you remember your serial number?"

Bucky squeezed his eyes shut, concentrating hard. He'd had that drilled into him, and he'd been repeating it in the memory of being experimented on, the way they'd been trained to do under torture. He could do this. He just had to remember remembering. "3255...70...3...8? Right?"

Steve removed his hand and looked at the tag. "That matches. But it doesn't sound right."

"I have accessed the army's files, and Sergeant Barnes is correct." JARVIS told them.

Steve frowned. "Are you certain? I feel like it should start with a...one."

"Volunteers had serial numbers beginning with one," JARVIS confirmed.

"See, so yeah. That can't be right."

"...and draftees had serial numbers beginning with three." JARVIS finished.

"Yes, that's right. And Bucky should have a serial number starting with a one, because he enlisted." Steve said, "So those tags can't be real."

"Army records indicate that Sergeant Barnes was drafted." JARVIS informed them.

Steve whipped around to look at Bucky, who looked like he was hoping the floor would swallow him up. "Buck, that's not true, is it? You enlisted. After Pearl Harbor. You said you wanted a piece of the action."

Bucky squirmed under his best friend's gaze. "...no. JARVIS is right."

"Are you certain? Your memory is still pretty patchy, just because you don't remember it..."

"I remember it. Standing in our kitchen looking at that draft notice. Hiding it in a hurry because I heard your key in the door." The memory had been a vague impression that the event had occurred, but paying attention to it brought the picture into focus, the flood of emotions attached to it rushing back. Bucky hung his head, knowing that he had to tell him because he couldn't hide anything because Steve _was_ going to look up the records now, to confirm it, and would find out _everything_. "...desperately trying to convince the recruiter that I needed to stay home and look after you."

He could see the recruiter so clearly. Sergeant…Perkins? _A middle-aged man who kept a bottle of whiskey in his desk and a walking stick tucked behind a file cabinet for the bad days, pinching the bridge of his nose tiredly as he regarded the younger man in front of him. "James, I understand your position, really, I do." He'd said, "I had a sister who was delicate. But you can't get an exemption to care for someone who's not family." Bucky had tried to protest that he was all the family that Steve had, but the recruiter had cut him off. "I can't help you dodge the draft, but I can help you help your friend. I can tell people the right things to put you on the radar as a candidate for promotion." He flipped through a binder and turned it to show Bucky a list of figures. Salaries by rank. "You live up to that praise, and you'll be sending home enough money to pay all his medical bills."_

Steve's jaw dropped. Bucky cringed. "I'm sorry?"

Steve opened and closed his mouth a few times before he found his words. "But...Why did you lie to me about it?"

"You wanted so badly to go. I didn't have the guts to tell you I _didn't_ want to go. And I knew you'd be offended by the implication that I thought you couldn't look after yourself if you found out I was trying to dodge the draft because of you." He glared at Steve defiantly, voice rising as he spoke. "But I was _right_ , wasn't I? You _couldn't_ look after yourself. Within _minutes_ of the last time I saw you before leaving, you volunteered yourself as a fucking lab rat for some crazy German scientist."

A myriad of conflicting emotions crossed Steve's face. He reached out to grab Bucky by the collar and give him the what-for, as he had done many times before in a much smaller body when his friend had questioned his toughness, and Bucky automatically flinched away from the sudden movement. Steve felt his heart break into a thousand tiny pieces.

Yes, it was dangerous. Even with his injuries, Steve had no doubt that Bucky could snap his spine like a twig with that metal arm if he were to startle and lash out. But he did it anyway. He closed the distance between them in a single step and hugged his friend fiercely. Bucky jumped and tried to pull away, but Steve didn't let him go, and after a minute he felt Bucky's breathing steady and his arms wrap around his waist. "Don't do it again, you got that?"

"Wish on, punk." Bucky's voice was a little shaky, but the insult was a good sign. "My only regret is that I failed to protect you."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, that serial number is MCU canon (he's repeating it on the table) and the meanings of the digits are historically accurate. I don't know if they still have those meanings, but they did in WWII. Bucky was drafted, meaning there was no free will involved in the winter soldier's origin story, not even choosing to go to war. Ouch.
> 
> The rest of the info on his tags I got off the replica tags that I got for him.


	11. Chapter 11

"Whatcha doing?"

Bucky looked up from his bowl of cereal. "Eating breakfast? We're clean out of oatmeal upstairs and I have no idea how Steve can choke down his own omelettes, so I came down to see if there were any breakfast foods in the common space. Was this cereal someone's?"

"Nah, it's for everyone." Tony poured himself a cup of coffee, a hilarious idea forming in his head. It wasn't every day he had a convenient amnesiac to mess with a little, and without his ever-present overprotective best friend, too. He looked over at Bucky's nearly-empty bowl of cereal and did a double-take. "Whoa, did you put milk on that?"

"Um. Yes." Bucky gave him a confused look. "Is that not a thing?"

"No. No, people still do it. It's just, I thought you were lactose intolerant."

Bucky frowned. "I don't remember that."

"That is not in my database." Added JARVIS.

"I don't know whether it's on record." Tony leaned up against the counter. "Guess it's not, so you should add that, J. But yeah, Steve said you were. I bet that's why his omelettes make you want to puke; he probably puts a ton of cheese in them or something."

"I guess he'd know." Bucky pushed his cereal bowl away, stomach knotting. "Thanks for the warning."

\----

Steve wondered if he could get Bucky to venture out of the tower with him when he went for groceries. He'd bring up the subject after his post-workout shower, he decided. But shower first. Definitely shower first. That had been a good workout.

The bathroom door was closed. Ok. Having a roommate again meant occasionally having to wait for the bathroom.

But wait. He thought he could hear retching. He pressed his ear to the door. Yup. "Bucky? You okay?"

Bucky groaned. Steve had definitely heard. "Don't worry about me."

"Don't tell me not to worry about you. I'm coming in." He opened the door and knelt beside Bucky, taking a good look at him. "Upset stomach, anything else wrong?"

"No."

Steve felt Bucky's forehead. "You're not feverish."

"I'll be fine."

"Maybe I should get Bruce to check you out."

"No, I'll be fine. Really. I just forgot I was lactose intolerant and nobody reminded me until I'd already had milk."

Steve sat back, face clouding with suspicion. Food intolerances hadn't been that common in their day so he wasn't exactly an expert, but he was _pretty_ sure somebody had talked about this particular one in front of him and this didn't seem quite right and _besides_... "Since when are you lactose intolerant?"

"I don't know. I thought you told your teammates that I was."

"Who told you _that_?" Steve handed him a glass of water.

"...Tony."

Steve pursed his lips. "Well, you're not."

"So why am I feeling sick after having milk?"

"You are most likely having a psychosomatic reaction induced by Mr Stark playing a trick on you." JARVIS explained. "I have now corrected your records, and I would recommend that you and Captain Rogers work with Dr Banner to bring your medical records properly up to date so that neither of us fall for such a trick again."

"You sure?" Bucky leaned back against the wall, still queasy.

"Quite." Steve passed him a damp washcloth. "I've been cooking with dairy products this whole time and you've never had a problem. How about you freshen up and go relax with a book for a bit? I have something I need to go do."

\----

"Anthony Edward Stark. Explain yourself."

Tony froze. Pepper raised an eyebrow. "Oh dear. A friend of your father calling you by your full name in a dangerously calm tone. Is this what it takes to reduce you to a repentant schoolboy?"

"Shut up Pepper. This isn't funny." Tony tried to sidle behind her. "I'm not here. God he sounds pissed. In fact, I'm on a business trip in China right now."

"Oh no you don't." Pepper stepped away from him in a hurry. "I am _not_ protecting you from a ticked off Captain America. What did you even _do_?"

"Would you care to explain why I just found my best friend suffering a psychosomatic reaction?" Steve crossed his arms. Tony gulped. Pepper stepped even further away from Tony.

"Must've eaten your cooking." Tony quipped.

Steve lifted him off the ground by the front of his shirt. "That's funny. I suppose you're going to deny the story that I just heard from Bucky and JARVIS?"

"JARVIS, you traitor!"

\----

There was one panel of glass, up high and in a corner, that hadn't yet been replaced after the last time it had been shattered by an experiment gone wrong. Bucky eyed it, smirked, tucked the bottle of ipecac in his pocket, braced his back against the cement side of the corner, and began levering himself up by the metal supports between the panes of glass. He was the fucking Winter Soldier, and he did not need to use the (locked and alarmed) door to get into Tony's lab.

He barely squeezed through, but he made it, headfirst, planting his hands on the wall and doing a flip down it to land on his feet. Okay, he was in. The lab was just begging to be explored, but first he needed to find the coffee maker and deliver his little present.

As he paced the room, Bucky heard movement behind him. He shrank into the shadows, looking around for the source. He didn't want a fight or damage. He just wanted to get in and out without a trace so that that asshole Tony would drink his coffee without suspecting that anything might have been messed with.

That robot there. It had moved. It had definitely moved. Aw shit. It knew where he was and was headed straight for him. Bucky stayed very still. It didn't look armed or aggressive and there were no alarms going off. In fact, it looked curious. Perhaps if he made no sudden moves he could make it think he was friendly, like it was a dog. Yeah. Get friendly with the guard dog.

"Hey there buddy." He reached a hand out to pat it. The metal one, just in case it tried to do whatever its equivalent of biting might be. "Hi. I'm a friend, okay? I just moved in."

The robot bumped his hand almost affectionately, as if it really were an animal asking to be petted. Bucky patted it gently. Okay. This was working so far.

Eep! The robot's appendage had grabbed him by the wrist. Okay. Deep breaths. Stay calm. It wasn't gripping him hard, it was just kind of...there. "Hey, what're you doing? I'm a friend."

The robot made a cheerful little trill, let go, rubbed against the length of his arm, and grabbed him again, gently tugging on his wrist for him to follow. Bucky did, trying not to laugh with relief as he realized what was going on. The robot thought that his metal arm was a new lab robot and was trying to make friends. This was...wow. It was actually kind of adorable how excited the robot was to show its new friend around. It was dragging Bucky (or rather his arm; Bucky was pretty sure it had yet to realize there was a person attached) from bench to bench, making happy little noises.

And there was the coffee maker. Now to keep the guard dog distracted. Bucky made a point of messing around with other things on the counter with his metal hand, acting the part of a curious robot, while he worked the top off the bottle with his real hand.

Aha! The robot had decided this was a game and was swatting ball bearings back and forth on the countertop with him like a cat. Excellent. He just had to muster the coordination to keep that game up with one hand while dumping the ipecac into the coffee maker with the other without spilling it.

Okay. Mission accomplished.

Shit. Footsteps on the stairs. Bucky dived under the bench, just in time. Safe for the moment, but he needed to get Tony away from the door with his back turned long enough for Bucky to dart out it and around the corner.

_Ooh. Extension cord. I wonder what'll fall if I give this a good hard yank..._


	12. Chapter 12

"Sure, I'll go for groceries with you."

Steve blinked in surprise. "Really? That's it? I thought I was going to have to drag you kicking and screaming out of the tower."

Bucky casually rubbed a bit of motor oil from the workshop off his hand onto his pant leg before Steve could spot it, cocky smirk belying his nerves. "Stevie, I'm a ghost, remember? Besides, even if we do find trouble- which, let's be honest, you have a talent for- I'm healthy now." And it would be for the best if he were able to say he'd been out of the tower should anyone ask what he'd been up to that morning, once his revenge on Tony was discovered, he reminded himself.

"Well, okay then. I suppose we should buy you some clothes of your own too, at some point."

"Getting tired of your teammates making jokes about us being dating because I wear your clothes all the time?" Bucky quipped, and immediately regretted it. "Or have they not been doing so in front of you?"

"A couple times. I generally try not to dignity teasing from them with a response." Steve looked at him, genuinely concerned. "Are they getting under your skin? They'll stop if I tell them it's really bothering you."

"It's not bothering me." Bucky shot Steve a cheeky grin over his shoulder as he walked down the hall to raid Steve's closet. "If that gets out I'll be the envy of every dame in the world and probably most of the men too." As he turned the corner he heard Steve choke on his protein shake and swear through his coughs. His instinct was to turn around and go--rapidly--in the direction of a coughing Steve, but he held back. Steve was fine. And he needed the moment to compose himself.

Why did that bother him? The teasing didn't bother him. Steve's reaction made him uneasy. Why? Because he couldn't read it, he supposed. He couldn't tell whether Steve was bothered by the teasing himself, or just worried that Bucky would be bothered by it and embarrassed by any sexual reference. Which reminded him--fondue. Oh god, _fondue_. He filed that memory for later, because right now that wasn't relevant.

But why did he even care whether the teasing was bothering Steve? Was it that picking on Steve was _his_ job?

...Or did he want the jokes to be true? No. That was ridiculous. They were best friends. Who happened to share a bed. And had for years, without anything happening between them. _Snap out of it, Barnes_. He shook himself and started digging through the dresser for a long sleeved t-shirt. Steve's jeans were too big for him, a button-up shirt would look funny with sweatpants, and he wanted long sleeves for going out in public.

"Here, these should help with the disguise." Steve handed him sunglasses and a ball cap as he emerged.

"Thanks." He raked his hair back and jammed the hat on backwards. " _What_ , punk? Isn't this how all the cool kids wear their hats nowadays?"

Steve rolled his eyes. "Well, yes. But you're 97, not a kid."

"Still look like one. And your disapproval is far too funny not to do it." Bucky put on the sunglasses, and froze as a wave of something washed over him. He didn't have a name for it. Something cold, cruel, aggressive.

Steve (bless the brave little idiot) caught some change in his posture and snatched the sunglasses away. Automatically Bucky's metal hand lashed out and grabbed his wrist. They both froze. Bucky closed his eyes and took a shaky breath, releasing Steve. "Sorry."

Steve squeezed his shoulder. "Don't worry about it. Should've figured you would have a reaction to tinted lenses. You look plenty unrecognizable without them. C'mon. Let's go to the store."

Bucky steeled himself and headed for the door. "Yeah. Let's."

"You're not fooling me, Buck." Steve knocked his shoulder and gave him a quick one-armed hug as they crossed the room. "You don't believe me when I say it's okay, but I promise it is."

\----

The shopping trip was uneventful, although Bucky was horrified by the prices. He was pretty sure he'd never in his life had the amount of money they were spending on a single grocery run.

And then, walking back to the tower, Steve walked straight into a clump of flowers dangling from someone's window box while looking at something on his phone, took off his hat a moment to dust pollen off of it, and that was when it happened.

"Oh my god! It's Captain America!" _For fuck's sake._ Bucky withdrew to a safe distance, trying to blend into the crowd. _This is karma getting me back for that smart remark, isn't it._ "Can you make a statement, Captain?"

Steve looked up, surprised, finding Bucky in the crowd before responding. "Oh, yes. Hello. Statement on what?"

"Anything! Your life, issues currently in the news, whatever you want." The crowd all seemed to have smartphones out and pointed at Steve. Bucky glanced down quickly, double-checking that his metal hand was fully hidden in his pocket. Those things took pictures and videos, right? He was pretty sure Steve had shown him that.

Oh no. Steve was puffing himself up with a righteous expression that Bucky knew far too well. He shot him a warning look. Steve appeared not to notice.

"Yes, actually. There _is_ an issue in the news that I would like to comment on. It seems that there is now an outbreak of measles, which I was told when I was unfrozen had been all but eradicated in this country, because some parents have decided to _not vaccinate their children_. What possesses someone to do something as _idiotic_ and _irresponsible_ as that? Do you not realize that those diseases that we vaccinate against _actually kill people_?" Bucky was torn between _they're doing **what**?_ and _oh god, Steve, shut up, you're picking a fight with a bunch of clearly insane people_. "Especially children! Have any of you had any of the diseases you've decided not to vaccinate against? Because I have! Quite a few of them! And I almost died! Repeatedly!" Memories were rushing back. Bucky was going to have nightmares tonight about tiny Steve almost dying from things. "I've seen my schoolmates die from all of those things or become permanently disabled. Do you want all those diseases to come back? Because I don't!" Bucky tried to catch Steve's eye. This was not going to end well. "Nothing I've seen as a soldier ever scared me as much as when my best friend caught measles from me because that was the sickest I had ever seen him and I thought he was going to die and it felt like my fault for unknowingly infecting him." The last sentence seemed to take the wind out of his sails slightly as he remembered that that same friend had been sicker than that quite recently and was standing mere yards away giving him his best goddamnit-Steve-why-can't-you-stay-out-of-trouble glare.

Some members of the crowd took advantage of the loss of momentum to jump in and start trying to argue with him, answered by others in the crowd who had agreed with him, such that everyone was yelling and it was impossible to make out what anyone was saying. Steve was trying to argue back, because _goddamnit_ that boy _still_ couldn't seem to stay out of fights, but he wasn't any more audible than anyone else, and now someone had stepped up and grabbed him by the shirt and was screaming in his face, and he didn't seem to know how to handle an angry civilian woman.

Enough was enough. The din around him was doing Bucky no favors, and Steve had gotten himself into quite enough trouble for one day. Bucky resettled his backpack of groceries, took a deep breath, and waded in.

Bucky grabbed the wrist of the woman currently shaking his best friend, grip tight enough to get her attention even with his flesh hand. "Ma'am, you are physically assaulting an officer of the armed forces and an American icon to boot. I really advise you release him immediately."

Shocked, she did so. Bucky let go of her and grabbed Steve by the elbow, regretting that he couldn't make his grip any more painful without pulling his metal hand out of his pocket. "We are leaving. _Now_."

"I think I heard them speculating that you're my undercover secret service bodyguard." Steve said once they were about a block away, just to break the silence and gauge how mad Bucky was. Because oh boy, Bucky did not look pleased with him.

"Yeah, I heard them too. And I am your bodyguard. Have been since I was seven. Babysitter might be a better term though." Oh. That was how mad he was.

"You can release me now. I'm going to behave myself, I promise. And that actually kind of hurts."

"Good. Suck it up soldier."

"Bucky, I... Gah. I'm sorry. I'm not going to pull rank or size on you, because you're right. I could have handled that better. I should have remembered that I am a public figure and chosen my words carefully instead of recklessly blurting out my unfiltered thoughts on a controversial issue. And I shouldn't have made a statement on a controversial issue with people packed closely all around me. I'm the nightmare of press and security departments everywhere and SHIELD is probably going to fucking kill me for starting a riot. I'm sorry and I'll try to keep my temper in the future." Why was Bucky always able to reduce him to a sheepish little chastised schoolboy? It wasn't _fair_. Anyone else, and he'd still be back there arguing and escalating the situation.

Bucky released his bruising grip and swatted the back of Steve's head. "You're still just as much of a reckless little punk as you always were. Can't even go grocery shopping without starting a brawl. Problem is, now you're probably too big for me to just toss you over my shoulder and haul your dumb ass away from a fight."

"You were actually worried about me back there." Steve almost teased as they stepped into the lobby of Avengers Tower.

"You'd probably let them beat you to death with their purses before you'd fight back against a bunch irate housewives. Please tell me I actually did sling you over my shoulder and haul you away from someone you were trying to start a fight with at some point while you were little enough."

Steve blushed lightly. "Ah, no. I don't think you usually got to me before the fights actually started. You just showed up and finished them."

"Probably got the stuffing beat out of me doing it a few times, too."

"Yeah. A couple times when I was especially stupid in my choice of who to piss off."

Thor stepped onto the elevator with them as they passed the gym floor. "Friend Captain and comrade! I have just been summoned upstairs to view a video of you! Will you be joining us?"

Steve paled. It just figured that someone's cell phone video was already online and the team had found it. "Hi Thor, welcome back. This is my best friend Bucky. I don't think we will. We have groceries to put away."

"It is an honor to meet you Friend Bucky! We have heard much about how valiant a warrior you are!"

"I, uh, wow. I'm flattered. It's an honor to meet you too, Thor." Bucky's glare in Steve's general direction turned into a flustered blush. _Holy shit. The Norse god. In the flesh. And Steve's got him convinced that I'm such a "valiant warrior" that he's honored to meet me. Whoa._

As the elevator stopped at the common area floor, Bucky relieved Steve of his shopping bags and gave him a push toward the door after Thor. "I'll put away the groceries..." He gave Steve, who was giving him a betrayed look like he'd figured out what Bucky was doing, a wicked grin, "...while you go face the music."


	13. Chapter 13

Okay, so Cap had adopted and rehabilitated his best friend the former brainwashed Hydra assassin. That sort of thing happened in their line of work. (Case in point, the redhead currently bouncing rubber bands off his hand, occasionally hitting one off the ear of her partner who was all but in his lap.) Tony had a bruised face and was inexplicably ill, which Phil would have thought he was faking if JARVIS and Bruce hadn't confirmed that he had in fact been throwing up, but he still wanted to hang out with them in the hopes that Phil was there to yell at Cap. (As if he ever could. In reality he'd just stopped in to check on them and the video in question had shown up on a news site while he was playing with his phone in the elevator.) Cap had accidentally started a riot getting in a fight with a bunch of anti-vaxxers, and had to be dragged away by his friend. They'd have to keep alert for repercussions, whether publicity-wise or Hydra recognizing their escaped asset. (The cell phone videos had been mercifully grainy and his metal arm and long hair tucked out of sight though, so hopefully they'd get lucky.) Maria had been in and out, but left a few days prior to meet up with Nick someplace secret. (Drat, Phil had hoped to see her. But at least she seemed to be doing well.) All in all, not the craziest he'd seen life with the Avengers.

Thor bounced into the room, Steve trailing after and looking apprehensive. "Good day Son Of Coul!"

Steve stopped dead on spotting him, paling. "Good afternoon Agent."

"Hello Thor, Steve. It's Director now, actually. Steve, you look nervous."

"Am I in trouble for this afternoon?"

"I suspect that anything I would have to say about it has already been said by your friend. Where is he by the way?"

Steve looked, if anything, more nervous. "Why? Are you going to try to bring him in? He's not Hydra. He was brainwashed but I broke it and he's himself again and he's not a criminal and if you want to do anything to him you're going to have to take me down first."

"Good lord no. I want to welcome him to the team, if he wants to join, that is. SHIELD is dismantled, we're rebuilding, some of our best agents started out as enemies." Phil motioned them to come in. "Make yourselves comfortable. I insisted on waiting for everyone to get here before we watched the video of this afternoon."

"Bucky is upstairs putting the groceries away." Steve conceded, sitting down in the last armchair reluctantly. "Don't wait for him. I don't know if he's planning on coming down after, and besides, if he watches it again he might be tempted to swat me again but with his metal hand this time."

\----

"Oh my fucking god, Captain Tightpants, I have never seen you so... Un-polished." Tony snickered. Steve wordlessly held out a jar. "Oh come on!" Steve quietly shook the jar under his nose. Tony groaned and stuck a dollar in it.

"What's that?" They turned around to see Bucky hovering in the doorway. "And who is this?"

"Swear jar." Clint filled him in. "A dollar per swear word. And this is Phil Coulson, he was the liaison between the Avengers and SHIELD, and is now the director. He's a good guy. You can trust him."

"I'll watch my language then." Bucky could only imagine how much money Steve had lost to that jar. "Nice to meet you, sir."

"And you." Coulson looked him over, making Bucky squirm. He had the feeling that a lot of people had looked him over that way before. "No need to hover. Take a seat if you can find one. This is just a social visit, seeing for myself that everyone survived the Hydra incident."

Bucky looked around at the filled seats and decided on perching on the arm of Steve's chair much the same way as Clint was doing with Coulson's. "Did...everyone survive?" He didn't want to hear the answer, but at the same time he needed to.

"Nobody we were close to who wasn't secretly Hydra died." Steve comfortingly rubbed circles on his lower back. "Don't worry."

"They seemed to more or less reserve you for the big targets, like Steve and Nick and me, and we were a pretty decent match for you." Natasha reassured him.

Bucky nodded, looking at the floor. "Thanks."

"You're awfully quiet, Phil." Tony taunted. "Would've thought you'd be talking Bucky's ear off begging him for stories about life with the great Captain America. Are you too distracted by the birdbrain trying to sneak into your lap?"

Phil, Steve, and Clint all turned red. Bucky looked confused.

Tony smirked. "Oh and the trading cards! I'm sure you've got the trading cards for all the Howling Commandos, don't you? You haven't asked Bucky to sign them yet!"

Bucky started and fell off his perch. Steve caught him instinctively. "We have _trading cards_?"

"...yeah." Steve turned redder, if that was possible, and hid his flaming face behind Bucky.

"And Phil is Cap's biggest fanboy." Tony pointed out gleefully, enjoying the embarrassment he was causing.

If anybody was going to embarrass Steve, it was going to be him. Bucky slung his arm around Steve's shoulders, depriving him of his hiding spot. "Well that's poor taste if I ever did see it. Who'd fanboy over this idiot? You should've seen the dumb stunts he always pulled. Did you know that one time he got himself stuck in a trash can overnight?"

"You are such a jerk. Of all the things for you to remember. What about the time you fell on your butt right in a mud puddle while running because you were paying attention to the girls who were watching you instead of your feet?"

"Don't remember that." Bucky told him cheerfully.

"I do. Boy were you a sight slinking in with your pants all wet and muddy."

\----

Bucky jolted upright in bed with a choked sob, waking Steve.

"Buck?" Steve sleepily tugged on his bedfellow's waist, "What is it?" He didn't think he'd ever seen his friend like this. Upset, yes, scared, yes, crying-upset, no.

Bucky practically dived into his arms, clearly not truly awake. "Steve. You're healthy. You're alive. You were sick and there was nothing I could do and you died and..."

"Shh, hey, I'm here. We're both okay." Steve refrained from wincing at the strength with which he was being clung to, although he was sure his ribs were going to be bruised from that metal arm. Now he felt _really_ guilty about having brought up having almost died from so many diseases before the serum. Giving Bucky nightmares bothered him much more than causing a public relations disaster, or even making Bucky mad at him. "We're okay. We're both healthy and alive."

"Thank god." Bucky mumbled into his neck. "Never told you I loved you."

"You didn't have to." Steve told him softly, burying his face in Bucky's hair, "I knew." He didn't know in what way Bucky had meant that, and he realized that he didn't care. Whatever this was, had been, would be, it was right. Lying here tangled up with Bucky. Insulting each other. Worrying about each other. It was just _right_.

After a minute, Bucky's frantic grip loosened, and he pulled his head back, still resting on Steve's shoulder, enough to look at him searchingly. He didn't know how he'd meant it either, still halfway in a dream and semi coherent, or how Steve had taken it, but he _had_ meant it.

Steve brushed a tendril of hair out of his face. "And I love you too, Bucky, I hope you know that."

"Even now? Even after they took me apart and rebuilt me?"

"Yeah, I do." Steve pulled him in close again, pressing a light kiss to Bucky's forehead. He wasn't sure if that was the right thing to do, but he was barely awake and it was a comforting somebody sort of thing to do, and he'd already done it so it was too late to take it back, and hopefully if it wasn't the right thing to do then Bucky would just write it off as his imagination because it _had_ been light and _neither_ of them was totally awake. "I'm with you to the end of the line."

Bucky tilted his head up, and his mouth met Steve's, and they both acted automatically. It wasn't passionate or possessive, but soft and lingering. Realizing what they were doing, both looked away, blushing. "Did we just...?"

"Yeah." Steve barely brushed Bucky's jaw with his fingers, and that was all it took to bring his chin up and their lips back together. When they pulled away for air, Steve ducked his head and kissed the scars on Bucky's shoulder where they peeked out the neck of his slightly too big borrowed t-shirt.

"What are you doing?"

Steve pulled the neckline down and kissed the ones across his collarbone and the top of his chest. "You're beautiful." He caught Bucky's arm and brought it to him. Bucky was unresisting with surprise as he pressed a kiss to the metal palm. "All of you." He kissed Bucky on the lips again, softly. "And I love all of you. Just the way you are. No matter what they did to you or made you do."

Bucky hooked his leg over Steve's, pulling their bodies closer together, and kissed him again. He didn't know if what they were doing was considered normal or okay nowadays, and he didn't care. All he cared about was this. "It was always you, even if I didn't realize it. It never worked out with any of the girls," He kissed Steve again, "Because I don't think I really wanted it to." He nuzzled Steve's throat. "And at the end of the night, all I wanted to do was go home and keep you warm."

\----

The fact that Steve was still lying on his chest despite being awake already certainly seemed to confirm that the night's events really had happened. Bucky ruffled Steve's hair. "Morning, punk."

Steve swatted at his hand. "Jerk." He bit his lip. "Any regrets about, you know..."

Bucky gave him a crooked smile. "Shut up and kiss me."

He did. "Should we tell the team?"

"Will they be okay with it? I mean, is this a mainstream thing now?"

"Yep." Steve rested his chin on Bucky's chest again, looking for all the world like a faithful golden retriever, "In fact, two men can now legally get married to each other. Or two women."

"I think I like the future."


	14. Chapter 14

Thor was happy to help translate papers seized from raided Hydra bases. The All-Tongue came in handy for this; although many of the technical terms he did not know what they meant, when he copied them down they appeared to the reader in the correct language. He might need a good session in the gym after this, though, because this current stack of papers turned out to be the daily lab log of a scientist and included a description of some of the things done to Bucky. No details--those were probably documented in full elsewhere--but general statements in the day's summary. _Plates on arm not moving smoothly; trying GT's idea for the motors. Still having problems with cybernetics. Installed arm today. Attempted to wake the Soldier; throttled JH and had to be sedated again. Attempted to wake Soldier; throttled AF, sedated. Tried to wake Soldier; throttled HN, sedated._ Noticing a pattern, Thor flipped back to where it had started and grabbed a sticky note to keep a tally.

"Why are you chuckling? Hydra documents really shouldn't be funny." Steve crossed his arms angrily, just inside the doorway of the non-explosive specimen lab. Did the fact that his best friend-slash-boyfriend who had been tortured and brainwashed and used by Hydra had followed him in factor into it? Maybe. But regardless there was nothing funny about those documents _whatever_ they were.

Thor looked up, wide grin becoming wider when he spotted Bucky. "Friend Bucky! You are a warrior of great bravery and spirit and deserving of the highest honors!"

Steve's expression became even stormier. "That's out of line, Thor. He was brainwashed and forced to do terrible things under their control. Do not forget that and do not attribute to him the things their weapon did."

"I do not confuse him with their weapon. I have just been reading of their early attempts to control him, and how he fought them valiantly." Steve raised an eyebrow but his shoulders relaxed very slightly. Bucky's eyes darted back and forth between the two of them. Heartened, Thor continued. "According to these papers, the first..." He quickly counted up his tallies, "...twenty seven times that his captors attempted to wake him after installing his new arm they had to immediately sedate him again because each time his first act on waking was to use his new arm to throttle the nearest one of them."

Bucky's jaw dropped. " _Twenty seven_?"

Steve turned to him, eyes shining. "Bucky Barnes, you are my hero. Oh my god. That is amazing. You're my goddamn hero." He engulfed Bucky in a bear hug. Bucky leaned his forehead on Steve's shoulder and laughed with relief until tears ran down his cheeks. This really was amazing. His first twenty seven acts with that arm had been not Hydra's dirty work but throttling the Hydra scientists who'd given it to him and experimented on him and done surgery on him with him awake and screaming and everything else they'd done. Suddenly it--and he--didn't feel _quite_ as tainted anymore.

"A hero indeed." Thor agreed. "I think this warrants a feast in your honor! Friend JARVIS, inform the others! We must celebrate a true warrior's display of exceptional valor!" He got up and headed for the elevator. "And now I must be off to fetch proper Asgardian mead for our feast so that all might be merry! This shall be a proper celebration."

Bucky raised an eyebrow at Steve, both still grinning like idiots. "Should I take that to mean he's going to actually get you drunk? Remind me, what sort of drunk are you?"

"A perfectly respectable one." Steve told him primly.

"Then I clearly failed at getting you drunk enough. We'll fix that."

\----

"Hey! Gramps number two! JARVIS told me we're having a party tonight in honor of you holding the world record in throttling Hydra agents." Tony slapped Bucky on the back, oblivious to how lucky he was that Bucky had seen him coming. "Congrats! You are about to experience one of my parties, and my parties are _epic_. What drinks do you like? And what foods? Doesn't matter how extravagant, we don't do anything halfway here."

"I don't really remember. That chocolate cake we had here was really good." Bucky tried to think. "I've liked everything I've had here, except Steve's attempts at omelettes."

Tony winced slightly at the reminder of the dairy incident. "Well, just blurt out the first things to come to mind. It's science. Memories are stored in a distributed way and sometimes you can trigger stuff through unconscious pathways that the conscious pathways are damaged and get them back that way."

"I know. That's been how I've gotten back most of my memories so far." Bucky pointed out.

"Right, of course. Anyway, word association. Alcohol. Go."

"Whiskey." It popped out immediately. "Vodka. I feel like the association isn't totally positive with that one though."

"Ah, you're a liquor man then. I like you. You probably like whiskey, you've had vodka but aren't sure whether you liked it. Okay. Well, I'll stock up on whiskey, and we'll have vodka for spider girl anyway, so you can try it and find out. What about wine?"

"Haven't the faintest."

"Right. Well. You can try that too. Beer?"

"I'm sure I've had it. Don't remember any strong feelings either way."

"Favorite foods? Anything you always wanted to try? Any ideas?" Tony moved on, typing away on his tablet. "Seriously, _anything_. Like, we get all kinds of exotic fruit for Bruce all the time and import Nat's favorite brand of vodka and stuff."

Bucky decided this was the perfect time to tease Steve. Especially now that they actually were together, even if only kissing had happened yet. "Oh, do you make a point of getting fondue for Steve then?"

Tony looked up. "Fondue for Steve?"

"Yeah, it's his favorite."

Tony huffed. "Figures. Capsicle _would_ make himself suffer in silence rather than ask to have his favorite food at a party even when I ask. What about for you?"

Bucky really couldn't remember much. "Nice cuts of meat? Buttery sugary stuff? Cheese? I lived through the Great Depression and rationing. Let's assume I missed the things we couldn't have much of."

"I'll get so many buttery cookies and steaks and exotic cheeses we'll be eating leftovers for weeks." Tony promised him. "You can thank me by letting me examine your arm later. Now shoo, I have a party to plan."


	15. Chapter 15

"Thought you were afraid of heights."

Bucky turned away from the window. "I am. It's a nice view though, so long as I look out instead of down. The city's changed a lot."

Steve nodded, joining him. "That it has." He knocked Bucky's shoulder. "Any plans for the afternoon?"

"Nope. Tony said he didn't want me underfoot while he plans the party. You gonna be a sap and suggest we go on a date?"

"We could. Where would my mighty hero like to go?"

Bucky rolled his eyes. "I spend twenty years rescuing your punk ass from fights you started, and you complain about it. I choke a few bad guys and suddenly I'm a hero."

Steve messed up his hair, leaving him pawing it out of his face with a scowl. "I had them on the ropes, jerk. But rescuing me from Colonel Phillips' boring administrative lecture and making a fool of Hodge would qualify you as a hero too, if you hadn't done it completely by accident and slept through it."

"How'd I do that?"

"Fell asleep on my shoulder while Phillips was rambling."

_Even while the other rescued men scattered to the medical tent or empty beds, Bucky stayed at Steve's side. He didn't have to, but neither really wanted the other out of their sight. Now Phillips was talking at Steve about everything they needed to do to figure out who was back and get them all in to find out everything anyone might know about anything, Bucky next to him and visibly on the verge of collapse after captivity and torture and miles of marching. Steve was trying to pretend that the colonel had his attention, but a pointed look from Peggy had him giving up the act to wrap an arm around his friend's back as Bucky's head dropped onto his shoulder. Now even Phillips was trying hard to keep a straight face._

_Not even pretending to pay attention anymore, Steve deftly hooked his free arm under Bucky's knees as they finally gave out, scooping him up so gently he barely stirred._

"So I picked you up like this," Steve swept Bucky off his feet, to half-hearted protest. "And gave him a Look and he was like 'oh fine' and I carried you to bed."

_Phillips almost rolled his eyes. "Go."_

_Back in his tent, Steve somehow managed to wriggle out of his boots without untying them and stretched out on his bed with Bucky draped half on top of him, still well and truly conked out. Taking care not to wake him, Steve eased Bucky's boots off one-handed and made himself comfortable._

_Not long later, Hodge's voice brought Steve out of his light doze. "D'you see that? Tinkerbell and some guy are all snuggly like a couple of fucking fags. I thought we were supposed to be men here."_

Steve sat down lengthwise on the couch, depositing Bucky in his lap and leaning back against the arm. "Gilmore Hodge--guy I knew from basic, big bully--came in and saw us napping on the same cot. Took issue with it, because he reckoned it looked gay." 

"If only he knew!" Bucky snuggled theatrically into Steve's chest and batted his eyes, fighting laughter. "Oh Captain, take me now, here on this tiny army cot with our men watching." 

Steve took a minute to stop laughing before continuing the story. "The other men hanging around took issue with him giving us trouble after what we'd been through." 

_A few guys glanced over. "Both of them outrank you, Hodge." One of them pointed out. "Might wanna be careful."_

_"I'm not afraid of a couple fairies. Who wants to help me teach 'em a lesson?"_

_"For fuck's sake." One of the other rescued men, bigger than Hodge, gave him a withering look. "They're not queer. They were raised as brothers, and Sarge was being experimented on by one of the crazy scientists. If you'd just rescued your brother from that, you wouldn't want to let him out of your sight either."_

_There were murmurs of agreement throughout the group. "What sort of experiments?" Someone asked._

_"Dunno, exactly." One of the rescued men said. "Sometimes someone would be taken back to the scientist's lab. None of them ever came out, not 'til the captain rescued **him**. We'd find their body on the pile to be disposed of, looking like they died of something other than overwork or a bullet, and someone else would be taken back there. Something had been done to them, but I dunno what. Usually had needle marks and bruises, other than that it varied. Weird shit. Skinned, giant body parts, liquified guts leaking out of them, imploded heads, floppy like their bones were gone, creepy as fuck."_

_Hodge snorted. "That's no excuse."_

_"Probably why you didn't get picked for the project." A guy that Steve recognized from training put in. "You're a self-centered bastard who nobody likes. Do you even hear yourself? Rogers just singlehandedly rescued 400 men from deep behind enemy lines, and you want to pick a fight with him because he's relieved to have his lifelong best friend, who he thought was dead and personally retrieved from some perverse experiment, back and is now, **after** getting everybody back safely, allowing himself to show his relief. Show of hands, guys, who **wouldn't** be reacting the same way if it was your brother?"_

_Hodge was the only one who raised his hand. Someone made a scornful noise. "Yeah, and this is why you don't have friends."_

_"I have friends. I'm hot stuff around here." Hodge puffed himself up._

_"Sure. Show of hands, boys, who can think of a single person who actually likes him?" Nobody raised their hand. Hodge stalked out. Steve noticed that quite a few men decided to hang around and quietly play cards nearby instead of wandering off._

"They told him off, described the condition they'd found the bodies of the experimental subjects before you in, pointed out that nobody liked him, and then spent the rest of the day hanging around quietly as a sort of guard while we slept." 

Bucky shifted into a more natural position, leaning against the back of the couch with his legs across Steve's lap. "I actually really got lucky, didn't I? Just to survive it." 

"Yeah." 

"And to heal fast enough to not get sent home." He didn't truly remember, but the few fuzzy snapshots that he had hinted at the kind of condition he'd been in. He should've been sent home, like that, but evidently he'd recovered before anyone had noticed. 

"Were you hurt?" Steve looked concerned. "You never told anyone." 

"Course I didn't. Wasn't gonna leave you again." He rolled his head all the way to the side, cheek resting on the top of the couch back as he looked at Steve. "I can't leave you alone or you get in trouble." Steve poked his tongue out at him, then caressed the exposed side of his face. The memory of the rescue already fresh in his mind, Bucky flinched away hard, hand going to his face. 

"Oh shit. I didn't mean to...How did I...? Are you okay?" 

"Yeah, I..." Bucky leaned forward, elbows on his knees, head in his hands, eyes shut, trying to fight the flashback. Cold metal. Whirring machines. The feeling of bones breaking. Steve's hand rubbing his shoulder kept him from falling all the way into the memory. "Yes, I was hurt. Their brainwashing machine. The first one, the one in that factory. It was...tight. And vibrated a lot. I had breaks down the side of my face from it. The memory of walking back was near the surface, and in it I had all those facial fractures, and then you touched the same area they were, and that triggered the memory of them happening..." Steve pulled him into his arms, dropping soft kisses on the top of his head. "I couldn't really see out that eye or hear out that ear when you found me. Both came back, gradually, before anyone remembered that nobody had checked yet whether I was hurt, so nobody was the wiser. I just always kept my good side toward you, so you wouldn't notice anything." His posture relaxed, allowing himself to sink into Steve. 

"Gosh, your head must not be as hard as I thought." Steve quipped. "We'll make sure to check for any lingering damage from that when you get your full physical. Which keeps not happening for some reason." He brushed his fingers along Bucky's chin, gently urging him to lift his head. "But c'mere. Let's try and crowd out that bad touch association with some good associations, yeah?" 

"Yeah." Bucky lifted his head off Steve's chest and changed position so that he was kneeling over Steve, straddling his lap. They began kissing, gently at first, and Steve's hand migrated slowly up his face as the kisses deepened, starting resting on the side of his neck with his thumb stroking his jaw and winding up at his temple, cupping his head and pushing his hair back. 

"Good touch again?" Steve gasped when they briefly came up for air. 

"Mmm, yes." Bucky braced his metal hand on the couch arm behind Steve's back for balance and wrapped his flesh hand around the back of Steve's head. He nuzzled Steve's neck and then started nibbling and sucking at the corner of Steve's jaw. Steve gasped and lolled his head back, which Bucky took as an invitation to expand his attentions to the rest of his throat. 

"Oh my god, that's...wow." Steve gasped when Bucky backed off to catch his breath. 

Bucky smirked. Steve had a clear hickey (or five) on his neck which he sincerely hoped Steve wouldn't notice before the party. "Have you ever..." 

"Gone this far with someone? No." 

"Me neither." 

Steve looked shocked. "But all those girls..." 

Bucky shook his head, blushing slightly. "Nope. Told myself it was improper, ungentlemanly to try. Maybe the reality was that my heart wasn't in it." He sat back so that he was sitting on Steve's legs instead of leaning over him. "What about all the girls who must be swooning over you? You're Captain America, surely there are girls lining up to sleep with you." 

"Went on a few dates. Nice girls, wanted to come home with me. I walked them to their doors and let us both believe I was too much of a prude." He shrugged. "I think my heart just wasn't in it." 

"Your heart is in it now, though, right?" 

"Every inch of it." Steve confirmed. "You?" 

Bucky pecked him on the lips. "Yup. No hurry though." 

"Nope. No rush, no pressure." Steve wrapped his arms around Bucky's waist and buried his face in his chest. "I'm content just to have you, no matter how far we do or don't ever go." 

"So about that date..." 

"I am very sorry to interrupt, sirs, but both of you are requested." JARVIS said apologetically. 

Steve groaned and looked up at the ceiling. "Who and what?" 

"Agent Hill spotted a moving truck with some men previously linked to Hydra in the cab pulling into a warehouse that just changed hands, and wishes Captain Rogers to accompany her and Agent Barton to, I quote, break shit." 

"Not Tasha?" Steve frowned. 

"Cracked wrist from her last such outing. Doctor Banner won't clear her to go for something expected to be minor, which this is expected to be since the previous inhabitants only vacated yesterday." 

"Of course." 

"I'm going with you." Bucky informed him. 

"You're not cleared for fieldwork either, not 'til you've had a proper physical." Bucky set his jaw and raised an eyebrow. 

"Agent Romanoff would like Sergeant Barnes to accompany her for some shopping." JARVIS added. 

Steve affectionately tucked back a strand of Bucky's hair that was falling in his face. "Buck, I know you want to stick close so you can have my back, but I'll be fine. Even the three of us that are going is probably overkill with only a handful of guys who are just in the process of moving in. I need you to go with Tasha. She's injured, even if not too badly, and we're all more or less walking around with targets painted on our backs lately. It makes me feel better if we all run errands in pairs so we've got backup if anything happens. Indulge me and go with her, please?" 

Bucky scowled and poked a metal finger into Steve's nose. "Not. A. Scratch. Understood?" 

"Understood." 


	16. Chapter 16

"So what are we doing?" Bucky restrained himself from gawking at everything as they entered the mall.

"Getting you clothes of your own." Natasha flashed one of Tony's credit cards at him. "Courtesy of Tony. It's about time you had things that fit, he's going to expect us to dress up at least a little tonight, and you need clothes of your own because let's be honest, Steve is living proof that liking men does not automatically give a man a sense of style." Bucky gave her a surprised look. Natasha smirked. "I like the look of his neck, by the way. I'm guessing he has no idea?"

Bucky rewarded her with a tentative smile. "I'm hoping it'll take him 'til the party."

"It _is_ fun to embarrass him. Don't worry, I'm not competition." Natasha reassured him without looking up from the store directory that she was reading. "I've got my eye on someone else." She looked around them, orienting herself on the map. "And speaking of embarrassing Steve, I think we should get you an actually modern wardrobe, unlike his. He won't be sure whether to be scandalized or aroused."

Now Bucky grinned for real. Natasha was alright. "Sounds perfect."

\----

Several hours later and loaded down with shopping bags, Bucky was feeling rather pleased with himself. Having his own clothes that fit felt good. Steve had said something, weeks ago, about how he'd always had to look his best back in their own time. That was believable. He couldn't wait to get home (when had the tower become home?) and get out of the sweats he'd borrowed from Steve and into something that wasn't so...shapeless. He didn't even mind that Natasha had talked him into so many short-sleeved shirts, though he doubted he would wear them in public any time soon.

Out of habit, he scanned the crowds as he waited for Natasha to get out of the ladies' room. Modern people were interesting. (And all potential threats, but he was trying to give them the benefit of the doubt.) They seemed glued to their phones. Everybody walking around with personal phones just sitting in their pockets was weird. It seemed like overkill. And they seemed to use their phones to type messages more often than to make calls. That didn't make sense, and it made him uneasy watching everyone walk around fiddling with little gadgets that he couldn't see what they were doing. They could have been remote triggers for things for all he knew.

That man. There. Coming out of a store, his nose in his phone like everyone else. He looked familiar. Bucky knew him from somewhere, and considering with whom the majority of his human contact in the past 70 years had been, that wasn't a good sign. Bucky buried his metal hand deeper in his pocket and casually picked up an abandoned newspaper in his real hand to hide behind, peeking over it.

Yes. Hydra. When the familiar-looking man looked up from his phone and Bucky got a glimpse of his face, it snapped into place. He wasn't one of his regular handlers as the Winter Soldier, but he'd been there occasionally on missions. A specialist in something, presumably. Regardless, this wasn't good. He didn't look on alert, but he also seemed fairly aware of his surroundings and was probably armed. Bucky was an expert in places to conceal weapons, and the man had plenty of places on him that he could have one.

Natasha chose that moment to emerge. As she weaved through the crowds and tables of the food court towards the table where Bucky had planted himself and the shopping bags with a soda to wait for her, he saw the Hydra agent glance over her, do a double take, and reach around behind his back. Yup. There would be a gun at the small of his back. Bucky didn't even think about it. He bolted through the tables and tackled Natasha out of the way, the shot shattering a storefront display on the other side of the room.

Natasha swore in Russian as they rolled in opposite directions out of the path of the next shot, so colorfully that Bucky would have blushed had the majority of his attention not been on the shooter. Okay, he was definitely aiming for her. He didn't seem to have spotted Bucky's metal hand protruding from his sweatshirt yet, conveniently shielded from his line of sight by Bucky's body, or else the escaped asset surely would have become the main target. But that meant that his attention was disproportionately on her, unaware that the man who had tackled her was an actual threat rather than a passerby who had been in the right place at the right time. Perfect. Neither needed to look at the other to know they were thinking the same thing.

Bucky took advantage of the shooter's distraction to make a lunge to snatch a pack of golf balls out of a bag dropped by a fleeing shopper and hurl it, hitting the man's temple. It dropped him, sending his gun skating across the floor. Not taking a chance, Bucky bounded across the tabletops and pinned him down.

"Quick thinking, sir. We'll take it from here." Two policemen caught up. They stopped and stared. "My god..." Bucky followed their gaze. They'd spotted the metal arm. _Shit._

"I think I'd...better go now." He stammered, backing away quickly.

"Hey!" One of the policemen called, one eye and his gun still trained on the (starting to come around) Hydra agent that his partner was handcuffing, "You one of the good guys now?"

Natasha caught up, rubbing her cracked wrist through the brace on it, and slung an arm around him with an expression that dared them to challenge her. "Yes he is. He's one of us now."

The policemen stared again. "I know you!" One of them gasped. "You're an Avenger! You're that lady that exposed the bad guys infiltrating the government!"

Now it was Bucky's turn to answer for her. "Yes she is, and that man is Hydra, so be very careful. He's a specialist of some sort, and a lot of them also have a cyanide pill hidden in a false tooth in case of capture."

"Yeah, don't let him use that. The director will probably be sending a team to take him off your hands, and he'll want him alive to question." Natasha added.

"Were you two pursuing him?" One of the policemen asked.

"No, not actively. We're trying to catch them all, yes, but today we were just out shopping. We didn't expect to see him or attempt to pursue him until he started shooting." Natasha told them.

"I was waiting for her, spotted him come out of a store, recognized him, tried to avoid him noticing me. She came out of the bathroom, I saw him see her and go for his gun, I tackled her out of the way." Bucky filled in, glancing around them nervously at the crowd. "Can we go? People are staring at us."

\----

"Breaking news! The Avengers recruit ex-Hydra assassin. Details at seven." Listening to the radio in the car on the way back from the docks, Steve froze, Clint choked on his drink of water, and Maria groaned.

"Something happened."

"Something definitely happened."

"I'm calling Nat now." Clint whipped his phone out. "Nat! What the heck happened on your shopping trip? Radio DJ just announced on air that we've recruited Bucky. Whoa. You okay? Good. How's everyone taking it? That's good. _Tony's_ \--Please tell me Pepper is helping him with the PR. Oh, that's even better. You home yet? Okay, we'll be back soon. Bye." He hung up the phone. "Bucky accidentally revealed his arm while tackling Nat out of the way of a Hydra goon who tried to shoot them at the mall. They're fine, it wasn't a deliberate attack, they just happened to run into the guy. Tony and Phil are handling the press."

\----

"Virtual press conference in the living room." JARVIS told them as they stepped onto the elevator. "You may change quickly or show up as-is."

Steve glanced down at himself. His uniform had some dirt and soot on it, but not too bad. He probably had helmet hair, but who cared. He wanted to see for himself that Bucky and Nat were okay.

"Compose yourself, Steve." Maria warned him.

"What do you mean?"

"You're fidgeting and you tend to lose your composure where Bucky is involved."

Steve nodded and straightened. "You're right. No showing my concern about the incident at the mall during the press conference. Captain Showreel, right?"

By silent agreement, they all got off at the common floor and headed for the living room without changing.

"...Of course he's a hero." Tony was saying, "We've been going through files taken from Hydra bases and in the process discovering just how barbaric the things that they did to him were and just how hard he resisted their brainwashing program. That alone would make him a hero, and in fact we had already planned a small party tonight in honor of him holding the world record in throttling Hydra agents. In light of his joining the team becoming public, we will be expanding the guest list and moving it to tomorrow night, and there will be a brief opportunity for questions and photos in the lobby at the beginning of the night."

That sounded less than relaxing. Steve shot Tony a glare and Bucky an apologetic wince, schooled his face straight, and joined his teammates in the webcam's field of view, Clint a step behind.

"So you say. Why should we believe that he won't go back to Hydra if they appear to be winning?"

Everybody tried not to wince. "What, apart from the fact that they intend to kill me on sight?" Bucky deadpanned. "As far as they're concerned, I'm no different from a police dog that turned around and mauled its handler instead of going after the person they set it on. I'm not a person to them. I'm a piece of equipment, and one that has developed a critical fault."

"And what fault is that?"

"I remember now. Who I am, who I was, the things they did to me. They've discovered that it is possible to break through their conditioning, and not only that but their enemies have discovered it too. Even if they _could_ take me alive--which I don't intend to let happen, because I hate them and they tortured me and I will die fighting and take as many of them with me as I can rather than go back there and let them brainwash me again-- I'd be too much of a liability now because everyone knows how to break it. Safer for them to destroy me than try to fix me." Hidden behind the back of the couch, Bucky's hands were shaking. Steve wished that he could reach over and hug him.

"Mmm." The same reporter was dominating the floor, undeterred, even as her colleagues behind her looked uncomfortable with her line of questioning. "Can you give us any examples?"

The tension rose in both rooms, the looks that the other reporters were giving her indicating that they were nearly as angry at her pressuring a torture victim to give details as the Avengers were. Behind the couch, Steve gave Bucky's flesh hand a squeeze. Bucky returned it, then pulled away, taking a deep breath. He didn't want to do this. Didn't want to be here. Wanted nothing more than to curl up in a hysterical little ball. But maybe a good shock would shut her up long enough for someone else to take over who had actually covered violent things before and would handle this better instead of some desensitized horror movie junkie, make this _stop_.

He yanked off his shirt, deliberately putting his many scars and his dogtags and his metal arm fully on display. "You see how my entire arm is metal now? Do you know where I _actually_ lost it originally? At the elbow. Hydra cut the rest of it off, with a fucking chainsaw, with me strapped down, awake and screaming, no drugs whatsoever, so that they could install this stupid thing and use me as a weapon." He could see it so clearly in his mind. Why did the most traumatic memories have to be the clearest? He knew his distress was visible now, but he couldn't help it. He couldn't keep his cool.

Steve squeezed his shoulder, an attempt at being comforting while maintaining public composure. "Breathe." He reminded him.

"Do you know what that feels like?" His voice shook. "The pain is indescribable. It hurt more than losing my arm originally did, because it was slower. Do you know what it's like to be strapped down, helpless, while someone violently takes away a piece of you?" He knew. Too well. Memories were flooding him, not just of that time but of being wiped over and over. "I have scars from the straps cutting into my skin from bucking against them so hard in agony." He could feel those straps digging into his flesh as if it were still happening. He gripped the back of the couch so hard that his knuckles turned white and the frame dented under his metal hand. "Do you know what it looks like, watching your own blood spraying under a saw blade?" He could see it in his mind's eye, feel the dizziness as he watched his blood leave his body, spraying in the air in a scarlet arc, hear the saw blade. "What it smells like, the combination of bone dust and blood and burning flesh and gasoline? Because I do." He could smell it even now. He looked down at the carpet and swallowed hard. "I think I'm gonna hurl." He told the team quietly, but some of the reporters seemed to catch it too. "Or pass out. I-I'm not sure which. Maybe both."

Bruce got up quickly and put an arm around Bucky's back. "Come on." He guided him, staggering slightly, to a chair well off camera. "Put your head between your knees. Deep breaths. In through your nose, out through your mouth. I'll get you a waste basket."

"Good going." Steve snapped. "Pressing him for details of the trauma he's been through. Because that's a _really_ humane and appropriate thing to do to a torture victim."

That did seem to break the intrusive reporter's stride, at least long enough for someone else to hurriedly crowd her out. "Yes, please, let's change the subject. Not all of us, let alone our audiences, have the stomachs for such gory details. Captain Rogers, how does it feel to have your childhood friend back from the dead?"

"I'm just so grateful that he's alive. He's been through a lot, but he's home now and he's recovering and I kind of don't want to let him out of my sight again." Steve pasted on his public face. He didn't really want to be answering questions right now. He _knew_ that Bruce was perfectly capable, but _he_ should be the one taking care of Bucky.

"And will this have any effect on the team?" Someone else asked.

"Not really." Natasha took that one. "We have another capable person. We live and train well together, this afternoon's incident proves we fight well together, he fits right in. SHIELD collapsing is by far the bigger impact on us. We've gone from one cog in a very big machine to a central player in what's left."

"Can you tell us why two of you showed up late, dirty, and in uniform?"

"Following a lead on some Hydra agents." Clint spoke up. Off camera, Phil held up one finger. "And we can take one more question, so make it good."

Bucky slunk back into the camera's view, pale but determined to at least make an appearance again before the end of the press conference. An older reporter spotted the earlier troublemaker opening her mouth and jumped on the opening before she could get her question out. "Sergeant Barnes, I want to thank you for your service and for returning to the fight not once but twice even after the things you've been through. My father was a prisoner in one of the Hydra factories that the Howling Commandos liberated, so without you, who knows if he would have gotten out alive to have me. Tell us, how are you adjusting to modern life?"

"I'm adjusting. It's different. Things cost a lot more." That drew a chuckle from everyone. "I think I like the modern world though, so far."

"Alright, that's all we have time for right now. Thank you everyone for your time, and don't forget to turn up tomorrow night." Tony switched off the video chat. "Oof. That was fun. I need a drink. JARVIS, figure out who that last guy was and send him a fruit basket for the quick save."

Steve pulled Bucky in to his side. "That was brave. You okay?"

"Had her on the ropes." He told him in a flat voice, dropping his head limply on Steve's shoulder.

"More than had her on the ropes. You actually shut her up, temporarily. I'm impressed."

"Yeah, well, I don't do things halfway. Unlike some people, I don't like getting hit." Bucky quipped.

"Neither do I, jerk. Come on. Let's go upstairs and take it easy. It's been a long day."


	17. Chapter 17

Although they went to sleep with Bucky as the little spoon, their positions had reversed by morning. Steve thought it might have had something to do with a nightmare, but he wasn't sure. He had a vague impression of standing over Bucky, strapped to that table, and knowing he was too late, but then Bucky's voice next to him telling him that he was there and it was okay. However it had happened, there was a metal arm wrapped (very) securely around his waist and slow warm breaths tickling his shoulder blade where Bucky's face was buried in his back. Moving was going to be impossible, but he wouldn't have wanted to even if he could have.

The party was tonight. And it had been changed to some sort of publicity affair. Ugh. Steve made a mental note to find out what expanding the guest list had really meant, as soon as Bucky was awake so that talking to JARVIS wouldn't wake him. With Tony, it could have meant anything. Steve just hoped that it wasn't _too_ big an affair.

He could worry about that later. Right now, there was a cool body pressed along the length of his. He had his best friend--if he was being honest with himself, his first love--back and things were peaceful and safe for the moment. Apart from him being bigger and Bucky being less warm and the bed being bigger, he could almost be back in the early 40s. It could be early morning in their little apartment; Steve, the lighter sleeper, woken by the sun, and Bucky still out cold after a late evening, another date or picking up some extra cash helping with something or covering somebody's shift somewhere. Steve would be reluctant to emerge from the warm cave of covers, but soon he would have to so that he could cook breakfast and pack lunches for them to take to work. Bucky would offer to help when he came stumbling into the kitchen halfway through, but unless he was feeling particularly sick, Steve would turn it down and tell him to hurry up and eat his oatmeal and get ready for work. Bucky was a bit of a disaster in the kitchen. Neither of them was much of a cook, but Steve was less likely to catch the food on fire.

Bucky groaned and buried his face harder into Steve's back to escape the sunlight, then pulled back a little as he crossed the line between sleep and wake. "Mornin', you. Doin' alright?"

"Yeah. Shouldn't I be?"

Bucky pushed himself up on one elbow. Steve took advantage of the loosening of his grip to roll over to face him. "You had at least one nightmare. I was worn out enough I could've slept through more."

"And now you're feeling all guilty that I could've had nightmares that you didn't wake up to comfort me from. And you call _me_ a sap." Steve teased him to hide the warm fuzzy feeling that he was getting. "You're just a big teddy bear, aren't you? A giant fluffy pastel pink teddy bear like you'd find in a little girl's bedroom."

Bucky spluttered indignantly. "Why you little--"

Steve grinned at getting a reaction and needled harder. "Probably have a ridiculous name like Mr Snuggles or something like that, and be covered in garish bows all the time." Bucky glared and flexed his metal hand on Steve's chest. "Nice try. You don't scare me. You'd look just _adorable_ with bows in your hair by the way--" Bucky creamed him with a pillow. Steve yelped and vaulted out of bed, grabbing his own pillow. "I bet Mr Snuggles would have tea parties with other stuffed animals." He ducked Bucky's swinging pillow and took advantage of the opening to hit him across the chest with his own pillow. "And he'd wear a hat with a ribbon on it to the tea party." Bucky's pillow hit him square in the face.

"Well then you'd be her chihuahua." Bucky put his two cents in, whipping the pillow around to smack Steve's ass with it before Steve could catch his breath. "Who she stuffs into doll dresses and totes around in a pram--oof!" Steve dealt his exposed flank a particularly hard blow, knocking him off balance. He rolled and righted himself, hitting the backs of Steve's knees with his pillow as he surged back to his feet and leaping backward through the doorway, clear of Steve's swinging pillow. "You'd look just _adorable_ in a frilly doll dress by the way."

Steve dived after him. "Not as good as you in hair bows!"

Bucky jumped out of his way, letting Steve collide with the couch. "You're one to talk...chihuahua. You're a cute little chihuahua with aggression issues." Steve hurled a couch cushion at his head, which Bucky ducked and then promptly landed on top of as Steve tackled him. "Tried to bite everyone's ankles when I took you for walk—yipe!"

Steve sat straddling Bucky and whacking him over the head with a pillow as he covered his head with his arms, both laughing like they hadn't laughed in 70 years. "What's that make _you_ then, a flirty tomcat?"

"Totally." Bucky yanked the pillow out of Steve's hands abruptly and flipped them both over, jumping out of the way as Steve tried to grab it back. "I should get you a leash and a muzzle!"

"Don't you dare!" Steve squawked, lunging again. Bucky leapt back again, colliding with the door. He yanked it open and darted out, Steve hot on his heels.

"Pink! A little pink leash and muzzle for my little chihuahua to keep you from biting people's ankles!" Steve wrestled the pillow out of his hands and hit him with it. Bucky ducked under his arm and made a break for the stairs. "With rhinestones!"

\----

There was a very long list of things that did not faze Nick Fury, especially when they occurred in proximity to the Avengers. Captain America and the Winter Soldier bursting through the door into the common area, in their underpants, tangled up together, wrestling for control of a pillow that they were whacking each other with, laughing like maniacs, was not on that list.

"What the _fuck_?"

The two super soldiers froze, sprawled on the floor with Steve on top and halfway through swinging the pillow. Two sets of very wide blue eyes traveled up the man standing over them. Steve gulped. Bucky glanced rapidly between the two of them. Familiar, but he wasn't certain how. Going by Steve's reaction, outranked them. His boss? More or less? That fit, body language-wise.

"Do I need to repeat myself?"

"No sir. Good morning sir." Steve hastily moved to get off his companion and stand up. "We were just, um... Aaugh!" His face turned scarlet and he tried to cover himself with the pillow as he looked down and realized that he was wearing nothing but his briefs. Bucky collapsed against the wall, laughing so hard he could barely breathe.

"This is not funny Bucky!"

"Yes it is!"

Steve hurled the pillow at Bucky's head. Bucky ducked it. The pillow hit a nearby lamp instead, causing it to go flying and shatter with a loud crash. Everyone froze. Steve turned even redder.

Pepper walked in with drinks for the army officials that Fury had brought over, standing on the sidelines with their eyes bugging out, and immediately spotted the lamp. "Do I want to know who it was this time?"

"Spangles." Tony announced gleefully. "Also why did I never make bets with people on what sort of underwear he wears? Because I totally would have won."

Steve whimpered. Pepper just rolled her eyes, unfazed. "JARVIS, send a robot up to clean this up."

Bucky retrieved the pillow and slung an arm around Steve's shoulders. "C'mon punk. Let's get dressed, yeah?"

Fury surveyed the two of them, for once in his life at a loss for words. He had known that the Winter Soldier had been recruited and supposedly rehabilitated. He'd had reservations about that, worries that Rogers might just be deluding himself into thinking his friend was still in there. But brainwashed killing machines didn't have pillow fights... did they? He really wasn't sure what to make of this.

Steve saw him looking at them. "Sir?"

"Go get dressed and come back. We have visitors." He gave Bucky a nod. "Glad you're you again, Barnes." Fury supposed that was all there _was_ to say, really.

\----

"That felt good." Bucky opined as they trudged back up the stairs.

"Just like old times." Steve grinned ruefully. "I suppose I was kind of asking for it, huh?"

"I suspect that you were totally asking for it every single time it's happened." Bucky retorted. "Sometimes you're just such a little punk that the only appropriate response is a pillow to the kisser."

"Oh there you go again, unrepentant as always, jerk. In the old days it took me having an asthma attack to make you stop attacking me with your pillow."

"That is so backwards. I stopped when _you_ stopped. Self defense. And it took an asthma attack to make _you_ stop hitting _me_." Bucky smiled at a memory of Steve being tiny and fierce, beating him with their thin worn pillows with all his strength. That was a good memory. He was glad to get that one back. Steve had been taunting him about his cooking skills for a week straight after a few days when he'd been sick enough to let Bucky do the cooking. Bucky had teased right back, but he was tired from a particularly grueling day of work at the docks and running out of clever insults and Steve was still at it, so he'd chucked a pillow at Steve. Steve had stared at him for a second, gobsmacked, then flown at him like a little bony tornado and hadn't stopped until he was wheezing so hard that Bucky had simply pinned him to make him stop and ordered him to _Breathe, you silly little punk_.

"What are you laughing at?"

Bucky pushed Steve onto the couch and flopped down against him. "You. I'm remembering you beating me with a pillow until you couldn't breathe."

Steve rolled his eyes, grinning, and leaned his head against Bucky's. "You always ended up getting all worried and just pinning me down until I could breathe again."

"Sometimes I think you enjoyed me pinning you down."

"And sometimes I think you enjoyed me hitting you."

\----

The visitors, as it turned out, were there to make a preliminary decision about restoring Bucky's rank ahead of the evening's event. They seemed to still be in shock over seeing Captain America's underpants when the two super soldiers got back downstairs, which Bucky was quite sure was working in his favor. He was asked to list off a general timeline of his history with Hydra at least three times and sat through several hours of horribly redundant psychological rating scales, but there were quite a few questions snuck in that he had a strong hunch were just the officials trying to sneakily take advantage of the chance to ask questions about superhero life. The psychiatrist wasn't even taking notes anymore but rather hanging on Bucky's every word as he regaled the men with some of Steve's ridiculous heart attack inducing ideas from the war, and when they left, it was with the promise that someone would be by to drop off his dress uniform later that day.


	18. Chapter 18

"You ready to face the crowds?" Steve tried to focus on his public face and not on how handsome his boyfriend looked in uniform next to him as they stood behind the door to the lobby full of photographers.

"Sure." Bucky flashed him a grin, but Steve could see the slight hesitation behind it. "Smile for the cameras, give them some sound bites about patriotism and sacrifice, then go inside and change and have our actual party with a nice carefully vetted guest list and no press. You know the people on the guest list, right?"

"Some of them. And the rest are known by people I know and trust, so I trust them." Bucky raised an eyebrow. "Coulson's inner circle, Tony's college buddy who became the liaison between Stark Industries and the military—he's the one who pulled the strings to get paperwork done and people out here to get you the same special status as me on short notice, by the way— Thor's girlfriend, and two of her colleagues who are also friends of his."

"Ladies and gentlemen of the press, thank you for being here tonight." JARVIS announced to the room. "You will have fifteen minutes to ask questions and take photographs, after which you are asked to exit in an orderly fashion. Let me start by introducing Director Phillip Coulson of the Strategic Homeland Intervention and Enforcement Logistics Division." Phil pasted on a smile and waved to the press as he crossed the room to stand at one end of the roped-off area. "Captain Steven Rogers." Steve stepped out, looking smart in his old army uniform. _Captain Showreel indeed._

Natasha re-tucked Bucky's ponytail down his collar. "Brace yourself. I bet you're up next."

"Still can't believe I gotta salute that dork." He grumbled jokingly, trying to ease his nerves by making light of the situation.

"Sergeant James Barnes." Bucky took a deep breath and stepped out into the near-blinding sea of flashing cameras, letting his old uniform take him back to the 40s and his training. Steady gait, erect posture. Halt at attention. Snap a salute. Pretend not to see the flicker of almost-smirk on Steve's face. (He'd pay him back for _that_ later.) Cross the rest of the way. Copy Steve's stance, at attention and angled so as to watch both the door that they had entered and the main door where people would enter from outside. So far so good.

"Tony Stark and Virginia Potts, CEO of Stark Industries." Tony strutted in, waving and winking at the cameras. _Definitely his father's son._ Pepper waved politely to the cameras, the picture of professionalism.

"Doctor Bruce Banner." Bruce walked quickly across the room to join them, looking uncomfortable.

"Thor Odinson and Doctor Jane Foster." Thor strode in, waving happily and looking far too comfortable with it all. _Fucking royalty._ A young woman took a spot next to him, and he put an arm around her.

"Agent Natasha Romanoff." Natasha was all measured poise as she crossed.

"Agent Clinton Barton." Clint looked a little uncomfortable in his suit, but exuded the same confidence as Natasha. _Must be in their training_.

"Colonel James Rhodes." A uniformed man that Bucky hadn't met before entered from outside. Automatically, Steve and Bucky both saluted.

"The floor is now open for questions."

"Can you explain in your own words yesterday's incident? Why were you engaging an enemy agent in a public place?" There were murmurs of agreement in the crowd.

Natasha's opinion of what the reporter was implying showed only in the slightest stiffening of her shoulder blades. "It was not our plan. We were shopping and I was recognized by a person with a grudge. Sergeant Barnes saw him go for his weapon and threw us both out of the way, and we dealt with him."

Bucky nodded, trying to sound as confident as his new teammate. "I was waiting for her, and he caught my attention because something about him felt off. I saw him spot her and do a double take and reach for a likely place for a concealed weapon, and I just reacted. His attention was on her, because I don't think he realized who had pushed her, so I let her keep him distracted while I found a makeshift weapon and took him down."

"You let the woman distract the shooter." The reporter sneered.

"You do realize this is the Black Widow we're talking about, right?" Clint piped up.

"Nat can handle herself." Bucky added. "I pushed her because I didn't know if she'd spotted the shooter yet, but once she knew he was there, she would have wiped the floor with him even without me. I just hurried things along."

"You're saying this was a Hydra operative, but he didn't recognize the Winter Soldier?" A woman in a no-nonsense pantsuit asked.

"I wasn't common knowledge." Bucky decided not to mention that he had met the man a few times. "I was a ghost story of sorts, and they liked it that way. Scarier. Most of the people that did see me didn't see me without the mask and goggles and everything on. Add that to disappearing in the midst of the helicarriers crashing, and what few people would have recognized me with my arm covered up almost certainly assumed I was dead. He wouldn't have been expecting to see me, if he even knew what I looked like under the mask."

"He's unrecognizable." Steve backed him up. "He's been my best friend since I was six, and when we found each other again, while he was still brainwashed, I had no clue who I was fighting until I ripped his mask off."

"You think there will be trouble now that Hydra knows he's alive and on your side?" An older man jumped in.

"Most likely." Phil answered, at the same time as Tony said "I think they're shitting themselves."

"They will be erratic in battle. We must be prepared, but an enemy scrambling to accommodate a change in their plans gives us an advantage." Thor took the middle ground.

"Right." Steve agreed. "We would have preferred they find out in a real fight instead of having forewarning, but we'll work with what we have."

"What do you think is going to be the biggest challenge fighting Hydra?"

"We are not going to discuss strategy." Phil jumped on it. "I'm sure they follow the news too."

"So, Bucky—can I call you Bucky?—this century has got to be a big change for you. How do you feel about, like, electricity?"

The young reporter's face was so earnest that Bucky couldn't bear to make up something sarcastic, even as the other reporters tittered. "We, um, we actually already had electricity in my day, so I'd say I feel pretty good about it?"

"Are there any tensions over the addition of someone who used to be an enemy to the team?" A more seasoned reporter sitting near the young one stepped in to save her.

"Not really. We sort of tiptoed around each other a little at first because he was a bit disoriented and we didn't know each other—" Bruce started, looking like he would rather not be there but felt obligated to contribute.

"Cyberboy is shy." Tony cut him off. "We had to lure him out of his room with sweets."

" _Tony_." Pepper admonished quietly. "As Dr Banner was saying, we didn't know what to expect at first, but there was never any sort of resentment and we're happy to have him around."

"I see his rank has been restored?" The close-cropped hair and the way he stood made Bucky think the reporter had probably served himself.

"Yes." Rhodes took over. "We have conducted a preliminary evaluation and granted provisional status. SHIELD will be in charge of a full formal evaluation, and his permanent status will be determined after receipt of their report."

"So he could lose it."

"Technically possible, but unlikely." Phil assured the crowd. "We have no reason to think that we would find anything to warrant that. It's actually a question of whether he would be eligible to formally return to an active duty status should he want to. I expect we'll have to do quite a bit of paperwork testifying that loss of limb has not impaired his combat ability in the slightest."

"Which any idiot can see it hasn't." Tony added. The crowd chuckled.

After fifteen torturous minutes it was over and they were filing out of the lobby and into the elevators to go upstairs and have their actual party, JARVIS gently shooing the press out. Bucky breathed a sigh of relief as the elevator doors closed behind them.

"It's over. We can relax." Coulson loosened his tie slightly. "I envy my team the freedom to have spent that up in the vents on guard duty instead of in front of the cameras."

"I'm sure Darcy would have gladly traded with you." Thor's girlfriend pointed out, already removing her heels. "She was sulking about not being included in the lineup."

"Sam has been texting me all evening gloating about not having to do it." Steve complained. "Next time I say we make him. He's fought with us before. Let's make him an official Avenger so he has to do press."

The colonel loosened his collar. "The lucky bastard. I have been being all official all day and I cannot wait to get out of uniform and relax."

"You brought a change of clothes?" Tony asked him. "Good, because I'm pretty sure it goes against your precious regulations to have the kind of fun in uniform that we're going to have tonight."

"DUM-E took my briefcase upstairs for me."

"Why was DUM-E in the garage and where did it actually end up?" Tony quipped. "JARVIS?"

"I do not know why, but I made sure he made it to the guest bedroom on your floor."


	19. Chapter 19

There was a larger crowd in the living room than there had been at the photo op. Which made sense, given that the SHIELD agents whose identities were not public had been up in the vents on guard duty and a few other people had little to no public presence and therefore were of no interest to the media. Bucky scanned the room, trying to guess who was who out of the strangers. Most of them looked and moved like they were in fighting shape. Two of the strange men looked familiar, and a little voice in the back of his head said they were somehow positively connected to Steve. Well, everyone here was, but he felt like he'd personally seen them or someone with a strong resemblance to them physically together with Steve. So one of them must have fought on the helicarriers, because there had been another man, hadn't there? And the other? He wasn't sure. Who would he have seen with Steve in modern times but not have met?

As it turned out, that question was quickly answered. He hadn't.

One of the two familiar strangers looked around the room, spotted him by himself as he examined the bottles at the bar, and made a beeline for him. "It's an honor to meet you, Sergeant Barnes." He shook Bucky's hand. Firm, but not intimidating. A strong man whose strength was disciplined. "Antoine Triplett."

"Nice to meet you too. Call me Bucky."

"And me Trip. I've heard a lot about you."

Bucky winced. "Do I want to know what tales Steve has been telling?"

"Haven't the faintest. I've yet to speak to him. A little intimidated by you both, to tell the truth."

"Then who-?" If he considered it an honor, his information probably came from someone Bucky personally knew.

Trip ducked his head a little, letting the suave agent slide ever so slightly and the little boy who had hung onto every word of his grandfather's fantastic stories peek through. "My grandfather. He used to tell us stories."

Bucky did a double take, eyes lighting up as the recognition fell into place. "You're Gabe's!"

"You guessing that just because I'm black?" His tone made it clear that he was joking.

Bucky gave him an equally non-serious withering look, feeling much more at ease than he had been now that he found himself in the company of his friend's grandson. "No. I knew there was something familiar about you. I just couldn't figure out _why_ you looked familiar." He grinned and passed Trip a random bottle from the bar next to them. "Here. I'm a bit late to the party of slipping my fellow Commandos' spawn booze, but I feel obligated to do it anyway for the sake of fulfilling my duty." Trip laughed and poured himself a glass. "How's Gabe doing?"

"Passed away a few years ago, I'm afraid. But hey, he lived a good life, got out of the war pretty much unscathed. He would've been happy to find out you survived and see you come home. Liked you a lot."

"He talked about us a lot?" Bucky tried some of the liquor himself. Spiced rum. Not bad.

"I bothered him for stories nonstop, and he loved to tell them, and show me all his gadgets. Kept a whole trunk of them in the attic, just because. That trunk of gadgets saved our team's lives when Hydra made their move and we were cut off from SHIELD resources."

"I feel like we had some pretty cool gadgets." Bucky agreed. "You've probably got cooler ones now, but ours were pretty cool at the time."

"I think they're still cool. He said you had a hand in coming up with some of them. Something about you and Howard Stark and a bottle of vodka winding up off in a corner of a bar one night, scratching out a list of really wild ideas on a scrap of paper, half of which got scrapped after everyone sobered up. Or that's how Grandpa told the story."

Bucky shook his head ruefully. "I can see it happening. I wanted to be an inventor when I was little, Howard really was one, we didn't get to just hang out very much but I sure had fun when we did. Our ideas must've gotten wilder with every drink."

"I'm sure they did. He made you sound like a pretty sharp guy. Quick wit and good eye, was his description, with a smart remark and a bright idea for every situation. Sounds to me like exactly the sort of person who'd end up generating a list of crazy ideas when combined with a genius engineer and some alcohol."

Bucky fought down a blush and changed the subject. He still was a little uneasy with people praising him after the things he'd been involved in. "So who are these people, the ones that didn't get dragged up in front of the cameras?"

"Let's see." Trip scanned the room, "Over there, talking to Stark and Banner are our scientist, Jemma Simmons, and our engineer, Leo Fitz. He'd be an interesting person to talk to, if you don't mind me saying it. He's got a bit of Hydra-inflicted damage to live with too, some speech and coordination trouble. Might make him a little less mopey to be reminded that he's not the only one who has to wake up to those reminders every day." Bucky shrugged. Trip didn't push the subject. "Talking to Romanoff and Ms Potts..."

"I know Hill."

"Ah, good. She's a hardass. Scares me a little." Trip confided. "So does May though. She's the fourth-Melinda May. Senior field agent. Coulson's second in command. The two young ladies over there, the one in black is Skye, she's with us. Junior field agent, genius hacker. Coulson is a little worried about letting her near Stark. Or Barton, for that matter. Thinks they'll get in trouble together."

"Wonder why."

"I almost want to see it. And the one in purple I don't know, but I think Doctor Foster called her Darcy. Her assistant, is my guess."

"Makes sense." Bucky scanned the room again. "Who's that talking to Steve and Coulson? I recognize him from somewhere."

Trip shook his head. "Dunno. Coulson's got his recruitment face on though."

"Sam." Bucky looked around again. "Steve mentioned someone called Sam, and I don't see anyone else here whose name I don't know."

\------

"It's been an hour. I went to the trouble of getting your favorite food, and it's been an hour and you've walked by it five times without touching it. I counted." Tony complained, interrupting Steve and Sam's conversation across the table of refreshments. Steve looked around him confused. The only food on the table that he didn't think he'd sampled yet was the pot of thick off-white soup, for which there didn't appear to be bowls or spoons. He definitely didn't see any apple pie on the table.

"Have I? I think I've had a bit of just about everything on here."

Tony peered at the pot. "The fondue looks untouched to me." Wait. _Fondue_? That was _fondue_? Steve remembered Howard telling him that fondue was just cheese and bread, but he'd never actually _seen_ it, but yes, now that he thought about it that did look like melted cheese, and the plate of bread was right next to it, as were long-handled forks that could be used to dip it, and **hold up a minute** , why did Tony just imply that fondue was his favorite food? Oh for fuck's sake. Stupid question. Because it was Tony.

Steve groaned. "I can't believe your father told you that story."

Now it was Tony's turn to be surprised. "He didn't tell me anything. Hold up. What story?"

"If you didn't hear it from him then why are you claiming to have gotten fondue especially for me?" Steve wasn't sure he believed him. It didn't make sense. "I didn't even know what that _was_."

"Whoa, whoa, whoa. I asked first. You mentioned a story. What's the story?" Tony crossed his arms. "You are _not_ getting out of this one, Spangles."

Sam looked between the two confused avengers staring each other down, and the new addition to the team who had quietly moved closer to them and was sporting a Cheshire Cat grin as he watched, clearly the only person who knew what was going on. The Winter Soldier was all but unrecognizable out of that black leather getup, with his hair neat and in street clothes and that mischievous expression. He was _definitely_ up to something, and that was good. He looked good. He looked happy and human again, at least for the moment. If there was anything that Sam knew well as a counselor, it was that recovery was about life as a series of moments.

"...I didn't know what fondue was when I first heard your father mention it and other people found the ensuing awkwardness much more amusing than I did." Steve grumbled grudgingly.

Tony raised an eyebrow, eyeing Steve's pinking cheeks. "There has got to be more to it than that."

"I don't believe you that you don't already know the story. You just want to make me tell an embarrassing story about myself." Steve said suspiciously.

"Scout's honor. I had no idea there was a story." Tony spotted Bucky behind Steve, shaking with silent laughter, and realized what was going on. Oh there was _definitely_ a good story for this one. "I got it because Bucky told me it was your favorite food."

Bucky sauntered up and threw an arm around his sputtering and blushing boyfriend's shoulders. "Sex. He thought it was a euphemism for sex. Causing him to mistakenly think that your father was sleeping with his love interest, causing him to get _shot at_ by her when he tactlessly expressed confusion at her being upset about another woman kissing him on the grounds that she was 'fondueing' with your father so she shouldn't be upset about him kissing someone." Steve buried his face in his hands.

Tony burst out laughing, looking like Christmas had come early. "That's amazing."

Bucky leaned over and dipped a piece of bread, waving the gooey fork in Steve's face. "Come on Steve. Come out and taste the fondue."

"You are such a-Mmph!" Bucky shut him up by shoving the fondue in his mouth. Steve glared at him as he chewed. Okay, it _was_ good. And now Bucky was smirking fondly. "What? Why are you looking at me that way?"

"You've got cheese on your face." Steve reached for a napkin. Bucky caught his wrist. "Let me." He released his arm to cup his cheek instead, preventing him from ducking away as he kissed him and sucking the (tiny) spot of cheese off his boyfriend's lip in the process. "You were saying?" He pulled away with a cheeky grin.

"...That you're a jerk." Steve tried to give him an exasperated look, but he couldn't quite manage it. The kiss still lingered on his lips, and there was a solid and nicely shaped body tucked into his side, and Bucky just looked so incredibly handsome. His black slacks and dress shirt, obviously purchased with Natasha the day before, hugged his body just right, and someone (probably Natasha) had persuaded him to unbutton the top few buttons on his shirt and roll his sleeves up as far as they'd go, and it was accentuating the lines of his body just right, and damn he was a piece of _art_.

Bucky's arm moved from his shoulders to his waist, metal fingers wrapping gently around his hipbone. " _Your_ jerk."

"Mmhmm." Steve kissed him back. " _My_ jerk."

"That's just impressive. Still getting action at your age." Tony quipped.

Steve turned bright red at the reminder that they had an audience.


	20. Chapter 20

"You both seem a hell of a lot healthier now."

"Oh, uh, when did we meet before? You're...Sam?"

"Sam Wilson. Last saw you on a helicarrier."

Bucky winced. "...wings?" A nod. But that meant Sam had last seen him _before_ he got injured and sick. "And...both of us? Was there something wrong with Steve beyond the...fight?"

Sam glanced at Steve, deep in conversation with an awestruck Trip about something and not paying attention to them. "He isn't as adjusted to the modern world or losing everything he knew as he pretends to be. I don't think he was finding a lot of purpose in his life before he found you again."

"What do you mean? Do I need to be concerned?" Bucky put his drink down as he automatically zeroed in on _Steve in danger_. He wasn't interested anymore.

Sam chucked a little at his reaction. "You really are protective of him. He was…reckless, put himself in more danger than his missions warranted, just kind of seemed lost and unconcerned with safety."

"He's always done stupid reckless shit constantly. But...you're talking about beyond that, aren't you."

"Yeah." They both looked at Steve, animatedly explaining something. "Look at him now though. He's _happy_. I've never seen him happy before. Told me once that he didn't know what made him happy." Sam told Bucky. "And look at you. You've got color in your face and a twinkle in your eyes. You looked terrible before."

"Gee thanks. I'll...do my best to keep a close eye on Steve."

Sam pushed the drink back at him, bumping the glass against Bucky's knuckles. "Relax. He's going to be fine so long as you're around. He changed, as soon as he realized you were alive. You're the most important thing in his world, you know."

"The feeling is mutual." Bucky spotted Thor pressing a beer stein into Steve's hand. "Oh boy. That'll be that Asgardian mead that he thinks will actually get Steve drunk."

"Worth watching?"

"I don't remember, but my instinct says yes."

\----

Steve, as it turned out, was a giggly drunk. The mead didn't last very long on him, but Thor had brought back an entire keg of it, from which they kept re-dosing Steve because watching a big usually-reserved soldier acting like a teenage girl was absolutely hilarious. Bucky acted exasperated at his boyfriend's behavior, but nobody fell for the act. If anything, he felt rather blissful lounging on the couch with Steve sprawled across his lap and gleefully telling stories of scrapes they'd gotten into as kids.

\----

"Bedtime." Bucky eventually informed his giggly boyfriend firmly. It was late and nearly everybody had retired for the night already, leaving just the two of them stretched out on the couch with Trip and Skye sprawled against it listening to Steve's stories like a couple of awestruck kids listening to their grandfather's tall tales. Bucky supposed that in a way they kind of _were_. Which was frankly a terrifying thought.

"Awwwww…." All three protested.

Bucky rolled his eyes fondly. "I'm the oldest and I say it's past all our bedtimes. You don't want to get dragged to the gym on zero hours sleep, do you?"

Steve huffed and chugged the last of the mead in one go. "There are very few people here who outrank me, so I say we can sleep in and work out when I say we work out."

"Unless of course Steve would like me to start adding some stories of my own." Bucky continued unperturbed, "Namely ones involving him being a complete and utter idiot and making a fool of himself. You may have overheard the story about the fondue incident, but I bet you haven't heard about the time that he…"

Steve jumped up slightly tipsily. "You're right, Buck. Look at the time! Bed, everybody. Let's go. Things to do in the morning!"

Bucky restrained himself from audibly snickering as he followed him onto the elevator and snaked an arm around his boyfriend's hips. He hadn't actually had a story in mind to tell, though he was certain (and Steve's reaction confirmed it) there were more than enough that would fit the bill.

Steve leaned into the solid body at his side. "You're a jerk. But you're a hot jerk."

Bucky smirked at him. "Not bad yourself, punk."

Steve squirmed against his side rather like an eager puppy, but waited until the door of their apartment had (barely) closed behind them to attach his lips to Bucky's neck. Bucky rolled his eyes but grinned anyway. A giggly frisky drunk. Captain America, ladies and germs. Well, at least he was still rather talented with his mouth even after an entire keg of Asgardian mead.

Bucky picked his boyfriend up, not minding one bit the excuse to grip his ass, and carried him into the bedroom, where he dumped him on his back on the bed and crawled on top of him.

Steve's hands had gotten Bucky's shirt untucked and slipped up underneath it before Bucky had even gotten all the way onto the bed himself. Definitely uninhibited by the alcohol still. Bucky's heart was racing slightly from the speed at which this was progressing, but he doing okay. Steve's hands on his sides didn't feel like Hydra, and the kissing definitely didn't.

Besides, there was no denying that he enjoyed this. It may have been the first time he'd (well, either of them had) gone this far, but their bodies were very much with the program. He shifted his weight onto his metal arm and freed up his flesh hand to begin unbuttoning Steve's shirt. That should come off. That was the logical next step, because petting and kissing his boyfriend's torso seemed like a good thing to do.

Steve seemed to agree with that sentiment, because he broke the kiss to (attempt to) undo Bucky's buttons with his teeth. That was right; Tony had recently been waxing poetic about how sexy a trick that was. Of course, it clearly required practice, because Steve wasn't having much success at it. Bucky tried to keep it together, because it wasn't like he was exactly practiced at this either, but eventually gave in and succumbed to a fit of giggles.

"Jerk." Steve pouted.

"Sorry." Bucky kissed him. "I shouldn't laugh. It's not your fault my shirt isn't cooperating with you." Steve made a grumpy little noise that was so cute that it just made Bucky laugh harder. Steve growled and flipped them over, drawing a yelp and quickening of his pulse from Bucky. Okay, this made him a little nervous. He hated that it did. This should be fun.

Steve felt Bucky stiffen under him and looked up from his determined attempt to conquer the buttons. "Are you okay?"

Bucky struggled to make the words come out. "Get your hand off my shoulder. Please."

Steve did so without question. "Better?"

"Yeah." Bucky felt like a weight had been lifted off his chest. "Don't…Don't push on my shoulders. It makes me feel weird."

"Okay." Steve rolled over on his side, wrapping his arm around Bucky's back to pull him along with him so that they lay nose to nose with their limbs entwined. "I didn't hurt you, did I?"

"No." Bucky assured him. "I just—hand on my shoulder pushing me down. I'm sorry." He buried his face in Steve's neck. Why did he have to be so messed up. He'd ruined everything.

"Oh Buck." Steve kissed the top of his head and held him close, thumb rubbing little circles on his back. "I'm the one who should be sorry. I should've paid more attention to what I was doing. You have every right to be bothered by that." God, he was an idiot. Pinning his traumatized boyfriend down? Really? How could he have been so tactless? It was amazing that Bucky still wanted to snuggle up to him after that.

After a minute, Bucky hiked his leg up higher over Steve's hip, pulling them more securely together, and extracted his head from the crook of Steve's neck to kiss him softly. He didn't want Steve thinking that he was angry at him or not enjoying the intimacy. Steve seemed surprised, but reciprocated the kiss after a beat.

This was better. This was good. He liked this a lot as long as he wasn't being pushed down. The hand that wasn't trapped under Steve resumed unbuttoning the other man's shirt. Steve gave up on his failure of a bedroom trick (or maybe he just didn't want to stop kissing Bucky) and returned the favor, agile artist's fingers working faster than Bucky's so that they finished at almost the same time.

Steve scooted down fluidly to more easily pepper Bucky's chest and stomach with a flurry of little kisses, taking care to keep his hands away and instead lightly head butting his boyfriend's chest to get him to roll over. Bucky obliged and Steve settled himself between his legs, doing his best to nibble and suck every inch of skin that was now accessible to him, getting rougher and bolder as Bucky moaned and squirmed under him.

Oh that was good. Bucky was more than okay with the way that Steve was currently positioned on top of him, especially when he was doing _this_. He tangled his flesh hand in Steve's hair (metal hand doing the same with the bedclothes, which couldn't feel pain) and audibly whimpered when Steve swirled his tongue around his nipple.


	21. Chapter 21

"So you're really ninety-seven?" Coulson's scientist asked Bucky, looking at him appreciatively as he gathered up the sea of beer bottles strewn across the living room surfaces. A pace behind her, her partner's expression darkened. He evidently didn't like the way she was looking at him.

"Believe it or not, yeah. I'm about a year older than Steve, so I'm the oldest person here." He paused. "I guess that makes me the oldest SHIELD agent too. That's sort of weird to think about."

"You don't look it at all. That serum is really something else." She approached him, looking like she was examining a fascinating specimen. Her partner glared harder.

He should probably put the poor guy out of his misery. Bucky looked him in the eye. "You don't have to glare at me like that, Agent. I have no interest in making a move on your partner." The engineer huffed. The scientist looked between the two men, clearly surprised by the exchange. Bucky rolled his eyes and lifted the hem of his shirt to show a clear bite mark on his hipbone. "I'm quite happily claimed already."

The engineer relaxed, chuckling. "I guess you are."

The scientist peered at it. "My goodness that's quite the bite. That looks large for coming from a woman."

Bucky dropped his shirt and returned to gathering bottles into a trash bag. "Never said I was dating a woman." He reached for a bottle and gasped as a sudden pain shot through his arm. His left arm. The fuck?

"What? What is it?"

"I swear I-I-I didn't do anything. We're cool."

Bucky shook himself. "Momentary random inexplicable pain. It's gone now. That was weird."

"You sure you're okay?"

"After the amount of experimental shit that's been done to me, I'm not convinced okay exists. But whatever just happened, it's over now. Anyway, you're on the director's A-team. What's he like to work for?" Bucky changed the subject.

"He's a good guy. Fair. Takes care of his own." The scientist told him enthusiastically, joining him in helping clean up. "Almost fatherly, except, you know, spies and danger and things."

"Keeps a lot of secrets. But yeah. He, um, he actually cares about us, even if we know he'll have to-to put SHIELD ahead of any one, um, any one agent when it comes down to it." The engineer stammered. Yes; that was right. This would be the guy Trip had pointed out last night. Fitz. "So, um, what was it like, um, in the war?"

"What was it like serving with the great Captain America, you mean?" Bucky shook his head. "He'll never really be Captain America to me. He'll always be that scrawny little punk from Brooklyn who got in a fight every time he left the house and never won a single one of them." He caught them gaping at him and grinned. "He's a dork. An idealist. A hopeless romantic. More bravery than brains. King of the stupid reckless ideas. Got shot at by one of the founders of SHIELD because he didn't realize she had a crush on him and she caught him being forcibly kissed by another woman who he also didn't realize was making a move on him until she had him by the tie and was forcibly kissing him. Has repeatedly disobeyed orders to save me."

"Your best friend." The scientist stated, no question in it.

"Yup." Bucky surveyed the room and spotted a bottle on top of a framed painting. "How the hell did someone get that up there?" He stood on tiptoe and stretched for it. "I'm not even sure I can-Aha!" He managed to knock it just enough that it fell and he caught it, tossing it into the trash bag that Fitz was holding.

As he retracted his arm, the pain hit again, and this time it wasn't momentary. It was searing, white hot, felt like his arm was being torn off again, or torn apart. He doubled over, clutching at it even though he knew rationally that that was pointless when it was metal.

"What's wrong? You didn't even do anything. Oh god. Here, sit down. Leo, get help!" The scientist sounded terrified as she tried to help him to the couch.

Steve burst in before Fitz could make it out the door. "Bucky! What's wrong? What happened?"

"I don't know!" The scientist answered for him, "I think he's having a heart attack, his left arm hurts but he doesn't _have_ a left arm so it must be referred pain, and he's 97, so..."

"I have already sent Doctor Banner to the med suite." JARVIS told them. "I am not convinced of that, but we will need equipment to be sure. There is a limit to my analyses at a distance."

Steve knelt and picked Bucky up like he weighed nothing. His boyfriend's breathing was rapid and shallow, face pale with pain, but he burrowed into Steve's chest with surprising strength, clinging to him as he fought the pain and the memories it triggered. "You're gonna be okay. We're going to fix this, whatever it is. Just stay with me."

Bruce was ready with the EKG leads when Steve all but ran in, Fitz-Simmons scurrying in his wake. "Get his shirt open. Bucky, it would help if you allowed Steve to put you down...I'll take that as a no. Well, can you loosen your grip a little? Ok, there we go, just stay like that. Hold still, try and take deep breaths. We're going to sort you out. Simmons, start getting monitoring equipment on him. I started pulling things out, they're on the counter."

"His heart is fine." JARVIS announced.

"Thank you. Okay. Sudden onset, severe phantom limb pain. That's...fun." Bruce removed the leads.

"Short." Fitz blurted out. The others looked at him. "His arm. Something is... It's..."

"You think the wiring in it might be shorting out somewhere!" Simmons filled in. "That would make sense. I think."

"I have summoned Mr Stark."

"Good thinking, thank you all of you." Bruce glanced at the pulse oximeter on Bucky's finger. Not dire, but reflective of the fact that he was failing at not hyperventilating. "Bucky, I'm sorry but we're going to have to sedate you. Phantom limb pain doesn't respond to painkillers, so the best we can do is make you care less about its presence while we find the source. I'm going to try my best to hit a balance of far enough under for the pain to be manageable but still able to communicate with us while we work on your arm."

"I'll be here every second. I promise." Steve caressed his hair, not sure that Bucky even heard them. He nodded to Bruce. "Just do it."

\----

"JARVIS, every kind of scan on that arm you can." Tony strode in, already having been updated on his way upstairs. "I want a reconstruction that we can pick apart."

"Already on it. Calculating reconstruction now." A hologram complete with the inner workings appeared near the table that with the help of the drugs they had managed to get Bucky onto, flickering rapidly between variations as JARVIS tested the soundness of models. After a few minutes it settled into a repeating cycle. "I do not have the data to narrow down the possibilities further."

"Right. That's still something. I guess we're going to have to start opening it up then so you can repeat the scans with less interference." Tony started pulling tools out of his pockets.

"Or...can you detect electrical activity inside it?" Simmons asked, "Because maybe if you did scans while we did neurological testing, you could use the electrical activity to trace circuits and narrow it down that way."

"Yes. That is an excellent idea." JARVIS sounded impressed.

Tony stopped. "Brilliant. I see why SHIELD hired you."

"Bucky?" Bruce asked, "You with us?"

"Yeah." He was groggy, but there. They'd obviously drugged him without him noticing.

"Good. Do you have sensation in your left arm normally?"

"Yeah. I can feel stuff. Not pain though. 'Til now."

"Excellent. I want you to close your eyes and try to go limp, but no dozing off, okay? We're going to touch your arm and move it around and I need you to describe what you feel. If we're touching it, where and with how many fingers, if we're moving it, how, and if anything we do makes the pain worse. Can you do that for us?"

"Mmhmm."


	22. Chapter 22

Tony was practically drooling as they tested Bucky's sense of touch. It was inferior to flesh, but he had enough pressure sensors that his awareness of his grip strength and joint position obviously wasn't just training; at least a couple of sensors under each metal plate. It was impressive engineering, and Tony wondered if maybe he could adapt it to improve the fine motor proficiency of his suits.

Testing one plate, just above his elbow, brought a yelp of pain and a spasm. Simmons rubbed the bruise on her arm, grateful to only have been grazed and deciding not to mention it. "I think we found something."

"I have flagged that circuit." JARVIS informed them.

"Excellent. Let's keep going, finish mapping out the sensory circuits, and then move on to the motor circuits. I bet we find a problem in one of those, too." Bruce gave Bucky's shoulder a gentle squeeze. "Just a little longer. We're making progress. We need to finish this, and then we're going to have you move your arm for us so we can see where the wiring for that is. And then we can actually go and fix it. Hang in there."

" 'M fine." It was a lie. He wasn't fine at all. He had 70 years of experience with Hydra working on his arm, and this felt way too similar. Shirtless, IV in his hand, dazed, while someone worked on his arm. With Hydra he'd been upright and often restrained, but it still felt similar enough to be scary. He was trying to focus on giving them the responses they asked for, and Steve's presence next to him, one hand holding his and stroking his knuckles with his thumb and the other rubbing his shoulder, because those things were different. With Hydra there had been no comfort and he was not permitted to speak usually.

As predicted, asking him to move his arm in a way that mimicked the earlier spasm triggered a phantom touch sensation just above his elbow and an identical circuit activation.

"Okay, all done." Bruce told them. "We left that for last because we figured it might be weird. It looks like you've got a loose wire in your upper arm that's causing crossover between two circuits and sending your brain conflicting signals about what your arm is doing. It probably thinks you've got it twisted into some position that's impossible without serious damage."

JARVIS's model had solidified, though there were still fuzzy parts, and Tony was pulling it apart to look at the inside, Fitz watching over his shoulder. "Between the model and seeing for ourselves when we get in there, we should be able to go in and repair that with no damage to anything else. It was designed for repairs to be possible." Tony told them, grinning at the chance to take that arm apart even a little. "And while we're in there, I want to open it up a bit further to let JARVIS re-scan for a better model and oil the moving parts. That must've been done from time to time, and who knows when the last time was."

"There's a way. A-a reservoir somewhere. Distributes oil. They just flushed it occasionally. I don't know how often." Remembering felt bad, but thinking felt good. Thinking hadn't been allowed much. Bucky clung to that difference.

"We'll find it. If we can get this model really complete, JARVIS and I will be able to make a diagnostic program so we can do regular maintenance. J, you can see what needs doing here. Send up robots and tools."

"I'm going to put you under for this, okay?" Bruce told Bucky gently. "There are alternatives, but the one that's built in we don't know enough about how your arm works yet to know how to do it, and the other one I don't feel comfortable trying to do before we know more about how it's attached internally."

Steve squeezed his hand, trying to hide his own feelings about watching his best friend essentially have surgery. "I won't leave your side, I promise."

"I am sorry. But this is the safest way to do it until we get in there and get that model fleshed out so that we can find the way it was designed for this sort of thing to be done. And it'll be more pleasant for you to sleep through the whole thing, too."

"I know."


	23. Chapter 23

He was literally in Steve's lap. He was too groggy to make out a whole lot, but he definitely was. He was in Steve's lap, and he wasn't in pain anymore. His throat felt slightly scratchy, and there was still an IV in his right hand, but he was awake-ish and in Steve's lap.

Steve felt Bucky's eyelashes flutter against his neck, and rubbed his back gently, pressing a kiss to his forehead. "Hey Sleeping Beauty. There you are. It's over. You're all repaired. How do you feel?"

"Sleepy." Bucky mumbled.

"I'm sure. But you won't have to do that again, not for your arm anyway. They got the scans they needed to complete the model, so they should be able to find the off switch for doing major repairs."

"Need 'n off switch?"

"Yeah, to keep it from getting triggered to move by accident when they have to poke around deep in the circuits. Putting you under kept your reflexes from getting triggered this time, and then they bolted it down to the table really securely in case they directly triggered one of the movement circuits by accident. I'm glad you were out for that, because I don't imagine you would have enjoyed being bolted to the table."

"No." Bucky shuddered a little. "Wouldn't've done well with bein' restrained."

"Awake and talking, excellent." Simmons came in to check on them. "You should be back to yourself in a few minutes at this rate. I'm just going to remove that IV now that you've woken up without complications."

" 'Mkay." Bucky buried his face in Steve's neck while she did it, thankful that his hand was out of sight, his arm draped over Steve's shoulder.

"And you are free to go when you feel up to it, seeing as you are recovering so fast. Just take it easy at first until you're certain that you're steady on your feet."

\----

"Heard you had a bit of a scare this morning."

Bucky looked up from his book. Sam was leaning against the doorframe. "Hey. Yeah. Arm malfunctioned. Didn't know what was going on, so we all freaked out a bit."

"Sounded like the experience was painful, frightening, and probably a bit triggering." Sam sat down on the other couch, making sure not to crowd Bucky. "I just wanted to check on you. You doing okay?"

Bucky nodded. "Yeah. Repair was successful, pain is totally gone now, and surgery sucks but it's over and Tony and JARVIS are making a diagnostic program so they can do maintenance without today's dramatic measures."

"That's good." Sam knew that there had to have been more to the experience, but he hadn't really been expecting Bucky to trust him enough to admit it to him. "I was pararescue, before I got out and started doing the counseling thing. Two tours. Evac'd a lotta guys who thought they were dying. It's okay to be a bit shook up and lean on your friends; even the bravest are. And I wanted to let you know I worked with some really good counselors who've said they'd be willing to work with us crazy avengers, if you need someone to talk to about, you know, everything." He sat back, opening his body language deliberately. "No obligation. Just want you to know the option's there."

Bucky nodded, though he subtly tucked himself tighter into his armchair. "I do have someone to talk to. Steve knows what it's like to feel like he's dying, you know." He reminded Sam. "Not that I'm sure he believed for a second it would happen, of course, stubborn little fucker. I think he survived long enough to get that damn serum just by refusing to budge whenever Death came to tell him it was time to go."

There were quite a number of things that Sam wanted to comment on, but he decided to chase one particular adjective. "You're not happy about the serum?"

Bucky pursed his lips. "I am, but I'm not. Without it, the night before I shipped out would have been the last time we ever saw each other. It saved both our lives multiple times. But... They took my Steve, my gentle brave Steve who brought strays home every other day and tried to defend everybody he ever thought someone might be being mean to, and they turned him into a weapon."

Sam winced. "I never thought about that. I don't think anyone has." He'd read the history books and seen the museum exhibit and all of that, of course, he knew Steve's history in an academic sense, but it occurred uncomfortably to him that only two people still alive had had the chance to get to know Steve Rogers without the persona of Captain America influencing their perceptions. No wonder the guy had been so lost. "I wish I could have known him before all this responsibility and this larger than life persona got dumped on him. I feel like he's a bit more himself now he has you back, but I doubt he'll ever be quite the same."

Bucky made a huffing noise that sounded part amused and part exasperated. "He was a handful. _Is_ a handful. You think he's bad at staying out of trouble now; this is nothing. I had to fish his dumb ass out of back alley fist fights just about every day he wasn't too sick to leave the apartment. And even when he was sick he was a little punk about it. I've seen him hallucinating with fever and still manage to complain about my cooking."

\----

"Barnes, you want a mission?"

Bucky perked up. "Yes. What're we doing, Director?" He hardly knew the man, but mission meant revenge on Hydra...right?

"Kidnapping a Hydra bigwig in broad daylight."

"Bruce hasn't cleared him for fieldwork." Steve protested.

Coulson waved him off. "Won't be strenuous. I just need to borrow a sniper, and Barton looked like he was still hungover."

Steve rubbed his temples. He was worrying too much. Coulson would take good care of Bucky, and he was the boss. "Fine." He caught Bucky as he followed Coulson out of the room and kissed him. "You come back in one piece, you hear?"

"Aye sir."

Steve swatted at him, which he sidestepped easily.


	24. Chapter 24

"This," Coulson handed Bucky a gun, "Is what we call the night-night gun. Highly effective at putting people out without visible traces like a tranq dart."

"Cool." He inspected it with interest. "Who's my target?"

"Fairly high ranking Hydra officer was spotted arriving to a tourist trap. Skye, Fitz-Simmons, Barnes, we're dropping you off there to collect him." Coulson threw a photo of the target up on a nearby screen. "The guy's too predictable for his own good. Can't resist a farmers market, particularly if he can find some sort of nice exotic souvenir there too. The market in this place ticks all the boxes, which makes our job easy; all we have to do is wait for him to show up. Barnes, find a good vantage point. Skye, when he shows up stick near him and make sure Fitz-Simmons are the paramedics who pick him up when your grandfather faints in the marketplace."

"Bored teenager texting and trailing after her grandfather, got it." Skye made a face. "But not too close because like o-m-g, being seen with my family is _so_ embarrassing." Tripp and Fitz-Simmons chuckled. Coulson rolled his eyes.

"And I'll keep an eye on things from a rooftop and knock him out when everyone's ready." Bucky confirmed.

"Exactly." Coulson threw another set of pictures up on the screen, of a house on a wooded back road. "This is our safe house." He pointed to the spots marked on the map. "Here's the plaza with the market, and here's the house. Everyone converge there afterward as safe to arrange extraction."

\-----

The capture itself went clean as a whistle. The target showed up as predicted, Bucky found an opportunity to drop him straight into a fruit display (faceplanting into a pineapple looked painful; too bad the guy was unconscious for it) when nobody was looking too closely, Skye played her role beautifully, Fitz-Simmons kept their bearings and departed the plaza in the direction of the nearest hospital. The only complication was the people who apparently had nothing better to do than chase ambulances for fun.

"Don't turn yet, you've got a tail." He informed them over the comms. "I'll get that for you."

"Don't shoot people. We're trying to keep this under the radar." Skye retorted.

"Didn't plan on it." He stowed the night-night gun and took off across the rooftops. "Keep going straight and trust me."

There. Clean shot in about 10 seconds, just barely within range of his real gun. He pulled it out and settled into place. 3…2…1… the bullet just grazed the rear tire, causing it to blow out without going in. "Tail's gone."

"No death, no mess?" The borrowed ambulance turned down a cross street to work its way back in the direction of where they'd parked the SUV.

"Nope." Bucky jumped to the next rooftop, keeping them in view. "Under the radar, boss."

"Excellent. See you at the safe house." Simmons sounded eager to be done driving.

"Aw hell, I think you might have another tail. Fuckin' busybodies. Gray car behind you has been with you several turns." He looked around. "Make a detour onto the four-lane two blocks to your right, going North, see if you can get some cars between you and it. If you make a left at the light half a mile up, it should drop you right near the SUV."

"How in the world—" Simmons asked.

"Ask later. Cars trying to get out of our way on a four-lane should tangle up traffic and help us shake the tail." Skye opined. "Shit, that lands us close. Not much space to shake it."

"I'll buy you some time." Bucky took off again, zigzagging across the rooftops toward the traffic light.

"Need a-a minute to change um, change vehicles. And a few, a few more to-to get, uh, to get far from the- this one before anyone pokes around." Fitz estimated as they careened through the turn.

"I'll see what I can do."

Okay, he could see (and hit) things in the vicinity of the light. What next? There was a box on one of the poles the traffic lights hung from. That was probably the circuits for them or something. Well, one way to find out. Shoot it.

Bingo. He couldn't see all of the lights from his vantage point, but about half the ones he could see went out as the rest of the group passed underneath.

"Knocked out a traffic light. Should tangle things up." He looked over his handiwork. It seemed to have been effective, but he'd stay put so he could keep the others posted.

The sound of the roof door opening dashed _that_ plan. Spotted, armed and trespassing on a roof. Time to get out of here. He re-holstered his gun and vaulted over the edge of the roof onto somebody's balcony.

"Got spotted. Can't keep watch. You're on your own."

"Shit." Skye grunted as she heaved the target into the back of the SUV. "Ok, you two head for the safe house, I'll take the ambulance for a joyride and dump it somewhere while you get away, meet you there."

Perfect. Balcony door was unlocked. Being several stories off the ground, the residents clearly felt safe enough to get lazy. Bucky slipped through, locking it behind him, and found a window to squeeze out of. From there, he was able to jump and grab onto a fire escape. In the alley below, he slipped into the shadows, pulling off his jacket and reversing it so the lining faced out. He didn't plan on getting too close to people on his way to the safe house, and anyone who might have been alerted would be on the lookout for a light blue jacket, not a black one, and hopefully not look too closely.

The police showed up about fifteen minutes after Skye, the last one in, slipped out of the woods and in the back door. As soon as the security system alerted them to the car crossing the property line, they were out of their seats.

"Probably sweeping the area for the gunman somebody spotted on a rooftop." Bucky said softly. "We should probably pretend the place is unoccupied."

"There's an attic. Let's go." Skye announced.

Simmons eyed the trap door as Bucky pulled it down. "We're not going to get our guest up there, and Leo isn't that awfully steep for you?"

Fitz glared at his clumsy hands. "Crawlspace."

"That works." Skye grabbed the target's shoulders. "C'mon Fitz, the three of us in there. You two, attic. There won't room for all of us."

Which was how, four hours after being dropped off, Bucky found himself sitting across a dusty attic from Simmons, folded up uncomfortably to fit under the low slanted roof.

This felt too familiar, holed up in a bare dusty room in a safe house alone with a woman he only semi knew. Bucky's skin crawled.

_A woman handler. The only one, he was pretty sure. More hard edges than the men. Russian, like all of them seemed to be._

Simmons wasn't Russian, and wasn't in combat gear, and wasn't built like a tree trunk. Look at her. Take her in. The delicate build. The loose wavy blonde-brown hair.

_Katya plunking her gun down in a corner with a huff as she silences her communicator, and yanking her hair out of its skull-hugging french braids leaving it crimped and loose. He retreats to a corner, facing the door and staying out of the way like a good little weapon._

He was pressed into a corner right now too, come to think of it. No. He didn't want to know what happened next in that memory.

_She looks at him a moment, up and down in a way that makes him squirm; predatory. "Take off your pants." He can't disobey a direct order, he's programmed not to, but there's a buried piece of him trying to fight it, screaming in his head, making his hands uncooperative and clumsy. She crosses the room, undoing her own combat gear as she goes, and hits him across the side of his head with the belt in her hand. "Take. Them. Off."_

He could feel the phantom sensation of the sticky patch of blood matting his hair where Katya's belt buckle had opened a cut on his scalp, just behind his left ear. The impact of leather on flesh ringing painfully in his ear. The lingering sting across his cheek. He ran his fingers through his hair, trying to reassure himself that it was still smooth and silky and clean and definitely not bloody.

_Impatiently, she pushes him down on his back on the floor and yanks his pants and underpants down. "Stay down." She starts fondling him with one hand, continuing to undo her own clothes with the other._

_For once, all of him is in agreement. "No. Please." The soldier doesn't understand what's going on except that this is not part of his mission, and the little presence in his head that isn't supposed to speak is saying that this is wrong and he doesn't want whatever is happening to happen._

Bucky curled up tighter into his corner, hugging his knees to his chest as if to protect himself.

_She grabs him by the throat. "That is an order, Soldier. I will satisfy my needs, and you will comply and tell no-one."_


	25. Chapter 25

Getting back to the tower and the privacy of his and Steve's floor was a relief. Bucky half wished that Steve was there, half was glad that he'd left on a mission of his own. He had done fine acting as though nothing had happened in front of the agents, but didn't feel up to dealing with people. A nearly scalding shower—JARVIS wouldn't let the water go any hotter— in which he rubbed his skin raw trying to feel clean again before retreating into a cocoon of blankets was about all he could make himself do. Honestly, what the _fuck_. Was there any way in which Hydra _hadn't_ violated him?

He wasn't sure how long he'd been curled up, head in a fog, when the sound of the door latch had him jumping out of his skin. Oh. Steve was home. Relax. Bucky forced himself to lean casually against the back of the couch. "Hey there punk. Do anything stupid while I was out?"

Ooh, maybe not the best thing to have said. Steve was covered in dirt and soot and who-knew-what and wearing his kicked puppy look. Clearly the mission hadn't gone well. Bucky crossed to the door and put his hand on Steve's shoulder. That was all it took for Steve to all but fall into him, burying his face in Bucky's chest. Bucky wrapped his arms around his boyfriend's neck and pressed a kiss to the top of his head, protective instinct overwhelming his own distress. "Oh Stevie. I've got you. A rough mission once in a while doesn't mean anything."

"I couldn't fucking save them. I got two out. Two. They might never go back into the field."

"C'mere." Bucky gently propelled him to the couch and wrapped his abandoned blankets around both of them. "Do you need to talk about it?"

"Junior agents. Barely out of the academy. Got sent to take in some small-time pirates that were seen getting a little too cozy with someone we're watching. Found fucking Hydra instead."

"Oh shit."

"Small nest of rats. An experienced team should've been able to get themselves out. Fury asked me to go retrieve them because they were green. Fucking Hydra and their habit of rigging their bases with a million separate fucking explosives. Dumb kids thought they'd be heroes and steal intel. I told them not to touch shit."

"And they did it anyway and got the lot of you blown up." Bucky filled in, rubbing the Captain's back.

"They were showing off for me. Wanted to show the _great Captain America_ —" Steve spat his title "—what they could do."

"They were trying to save face." Bucky retorted. "They were embarrassed. They got sent to bring in some small-time pirates and fucked up so badly that they ended up hostages in need of rescuing. And then the agent sent to rescue them wasn't even one of their teachers, who knew them, but someone they looked up to and they were making their first impression on."

Bucky could feel Steve's jaw working against his chest as he struggled to come up with a comeback to that. Finally he gave up. "How'd your mission go?"

"Successful capture. And Skye got to take part in a car chase with an ambulance." He ruffled up Steve's already-messy hair further. "Your younger and less-responsible self would have fought her to be the one driving."

Steve started and looked at his boyfriend with a gobsmacked expression. "Wha—Hey! Jerk."

Bucky grinned. "Don't deny it, you little punk. It was right up your alley."

* * *

"How long has Capsicle been in the gym?"

"Four hours and counting?" Bucky gave the Stark spawn a tired wry smile. "He's upset about his mission yesterday. With any luck he'll tire himself out enough we can sleep properly tonight."

Sam came up behind them. "Did he go straight to the gym after running this morning?"

"Yup."

"Jesus."

"He needs to get it out. Surely by now you've figured out this is how he copes." Bucky pointed out, pawing escaped strands of hair off his sweaty face.

"Yeah, but I'm still impressed. I keep telling him, he should try talking to someone."

"What he _needs_ is sleep. I may not have your fancy education, but I know enough to know that a fellow can't think right to clear his head if he's not sleeping enough." Bucky retorted. "And that's what he's doing. Wearing himself out so he can sleep proper."

"The fact that you're picking a fight about this means that either you're wrong, or by your own argument, you don't sleep enough yourself."

"As fun as this could be to watch, JARVIS picked up some interesting reports." Tony cut in. "Think we should interrupt him for a meeting?"

"How urgent?"

"Rumors, so far."

"Let him keep going. Better that punching bag now than you when you make a suggestion he doesn't like in the meeting." Bucky raised an eyebrow at his companions' expressions. "What? It's Stevie. He's got an attitude. I'm gonna go catch a shower and take a nap in the common room until he gets done."


	26. Chapter 26

"We've got weird energy readings and rumors in Eastern Europe."

"Elaborate?" Natasha asked.

"Labs at several universities have filed bug reports with the manufacturers saying their equipment is picking up readings that make no sense. Readings that look like what we saw when Loki was around."

Thor shook his head. "My brother is dead. I buried him myself."

"What about that scepter he was waving around, or the Tesseract?" Bruce asked. "Those are what would give off the readings."

"The Tesseract was put in a safe place. But I shall of course check on it anyway." Thor added hastily.

"I don't know where the scepter is. SHIELD had it last, but…" Everyone winced. "I'll check into it." Natasha promised.

"Anything else odd?" Steve asked without lifting his head from Bucky's lap.

"Yeah." Tony nodded. "Around the same region as the readings. General unease. Spookiness. Lots of superstition and folktales, no factual evidence, but it's a bit suspect that things are getting spookier than usual at the same place and time as those readings."

"Good catch, Tony and JARVIS." Steve reluctantly straightened. "Let's keep an eye on that, see if we can catch anything useful. If there's nothing else, let's get on that. Tony, do your tech magic and find out what's so spooky. Thor, check on the Tesseract. Natasha, check on the scepter. Bruce and Bucky, I want to talk to you both. Everyone else is dismissed."

"Why do you need to talk to us?" Bucky asked apprehensively as the others dispersed.

"I figure since I have you both here, Bruce, how busy are you right now?" Steve asked.

"Not at all, really. None of my research needs attention right now. Why?"

"It occurs to me that Bucky still hasn't had a proper physical yet. Just because we don't have the SHIELD medical department to enforce them anymore doesn't mean we should ignore the rules for field agent medical clearances. I thought we could do it now before he has a chance to give us the slip again."

"I don't think that makes sense right now." Bucky protested. "We're still recovering paperwork from Hydra, and, y'know, I'm not exactly _normal_. We should wait until we have their records on me to tell us what normal for me is."

"Nice try." Steve and Bruce told him in unison, each grabbing him by an arm and propelling him in the direction of the lab.

"Did you know they had a nice handy user's manual for you? We found it." Steve told him all too smugly. "Very useful. We know exactly what was normal for you, at least under the circumstances. Best we can possibly do. We need a current exam now, without all the freezing and drugs."

Bucky moaned softly. "Of course they did."

* * *

"Elevated blood pressure. Consistent with demonstrated discomfort with exam, so not a cause for concern at this time. Pulse also elevated, though not as much as expected, which suggests the numbers on record are not entirely due to drugs and resting heart rate is in fact quite low." Bruce jotted more notes on his papers. "Let's get you one of the SHIELD fitness tracker watches like the rest of us have. It'll tell us for sure, and you ought to have one anyway. Body temperature is quite low, but consistent with what's on record. Farsighted, but no deterioration since last tested. I can recommend a place for reading glasses—"

"My vision is just fine!" Bucky protested. "I can hit a target from a mile away!"

"Yes. At a distance, you're superhuman, but up close you have to have your book in your lap to read it. Steve, stop laughing at him or I'll throw you out."

"Yeah, shut the fuck up, I never laughed at you when you were the one getting prodded."

"Right." Bruce busied himself looking over the x-rays again. "I see evidence of quite a few old injuries. Any chronic pain, or anything else odd you've noticed?"

"No. No, I heal well."

"Great. Well, so far everything looks as good as can be expected. I just want to do some blood work, and we'll get you up to date on your immunizations, and you'll be all set."

An invisible hand squeezed Bucky's insides. Needles. Fuck. "Can't we skip that? You won't find anything. I'm healthy, you just said so. And I have an enhanced immune system already. I'm sure those records will tell you I've never caught so much as a cold since being experimented on. Steve, back me up. Everything that went around in the army, we were the only two who never caught anything."

"Nope." When had Steve sidled behind him? Suddenly he was being bear hugged from behind, pinning him tightly against his boyfriend's chest as Bruce pulled out vials and needles onto the counter. "We don't understand how the serum affects me, let alone you. I still let them do tests and get all my shots as a precaution, and so will you. You've seen plenty of diseases up close that modern people haven't, and you know it's better to be safe than sorry on this one." Steve was right and Bucky knew it, but that didn't stop his breath coming in shallow gasps and his whole body shaking as Bruce tied the tourniquet and wiped down the inside of his elbow. "Breathe, Buck. Hey. Don't look at him." Steve kissed his left cheek. "Eyes over here. C'mon. I've seen you face down scarier things without flinching. It'll be over before you know it. Hey, we should go visit the guys that are still around some time soon." A pinch on the inside of his elbow. Needle. _Tables, straps, chairs, giant metal shackles. Bags of drugs. Confusion. Fear. Pain. Can't move. Haven't been given permission_."—oh, and Dum-Dum is at a place in Florida, I bet he'd love to see us. Hey hey hey, breathe. You're okay. Breathe. That's an order. Take a deep breath. I am your commanding officer and I am telling you to take a deep breath. Hey! Listen to me!" _Needles in his veins mean they're doing things. Experiments. Or taking away the voice in his head that doesn't like their orders. He needs to get away. He can't get away because his programming won't let him_. "Come on. Bucky. Listen to me. You're safe. I'm here. We're not going to hurt you. It's just us. Deep breaths, come on." Pricks at his shoulder now. _Those mean the drugs they give him in the field. The ones that make him sick. They make his heart feel like it's going to explode, and the world move fast, and his guts feel like they're trying to flip inside out. He doesn't want to feel like that. They make him feel sick and then they punish him if he shows that he feels sick. The world feels funny. He's not sure which way is up. They've finally done it. Finally given him so many drugs that they've killed him_.

"Bucky. Hey. Rise and shine." The world was fuzzy. He blinked and Steve and Bruce came into focus leaning over him. "There you are." He tried to sit up, and both moved to steady him. "Whoa, take it slow."

"What—" He wasn't quite sure he wanted to know.

"I think you had a flashback when the needles came out." Bruce looked very apologetic. "We tried to be quick about it and talk you through it. I think we were partially successful, at least. _Almost_  made it through before you passed out from hyperventilating."

"We thought we were being kind to you, getting it all over with at once instead of stopping and trying again later and making you suffer more times than you have to." Steve squeezed his hand, looking down guiltily. "I felt horrible doing it though."

"No, you were right." Bucky reeled his boyfriend in and hugged him. "It needed to be done, and that's the choice I would have made if I'd been in any state to make it."

"Is there anything we should know or be doing in the future?" Bruce asked. "I know what they gave you, sort of anyway—there were a lot of things we don't know what they were—but not your side of it."

"I, uh." Bucky took a deep breath. "They gave me a lot of stuff on an IV before and after missions, and when they did maintenance or tried to make improvements. Lots of stuff. All kind of effects. Mostly unpleasant. And during missions if we'd been out a while or I started showing any fatigue, they'd jab me with stuff to keep me alert. Made me feel awful. Wide awake but awful. Like my heart was going to burst and my stomach was trying to turn inside-out and everything was moving really fast."

"I saw those in the file. Amphetamines. Lots of them." Bruce nodded grimly. "Sounds like they overdosed you on them frequently, even with your increased metabolism. The protective qualities of the serum you were given are the only reason you survived it, let alone were able to more or less function." He squeezed Bucky's shoulder above the metal part. "How are you feeling now though? I'm all done with you, so you can go relax if you feel like you can stand without passing out again."

"Yeah, I'm good." Bucky slid off the table. "I think I'm going to go curl up with a book."

"Should I go pick you up some reading glasses?" Steve asked innocently.

"Don't you fucking dare."


	27. Chapter 27

"I think we're about done here. Everyone is accounted for, site has been swept multiple times by each of us, civilian crews are taking over rubble clearance. I can't really think of anything else; you?" Steve pulled off his helmet and ran his fingers through his sweaty hair.

"Yeah." Bucky nodded assent. "I think we're set." He gave Steve a sideways look. "How're you doin'? You look…off."

Steve half-smiled. Bucky was an expert at knowing when he wasn't feeling well, no matter how he tried to hide it. "You caught me. I've got a bit of a headache. Can you hear it? Something in there is squealing, really high pitched. Electronic. Some half-crushed gadget."

Bucky cocked his head thoughtfully. "No. Must be too high for me. Who'd've thunk it, one day you'd hear better than me?"

"I know, right?"

"Mister?" An older woman approached them, tentatively.

"Hi. Yes. What can we do?" Steve asked, straightening up hastily.

"Sorry. I no, uh, no find my, um, my Gabi."

"We're missing a person? I thought everyone was accounted for." Steve dusted off his helmet and steeled himself to dive back into the rubble.

"No person. Is, ah, no remember word, meow?"

"Vasha koshka?" Bucky asked. The woman's brow furrowed. Damn, he needed to learn Sokovian. Why couldn't they have gotten around to programming him with that one too before his escape? He tried another language. "Pisica ta?"

She brightened. "Da! E mic și cafeniu. E doar un pisoi."

Steve was frozen like old Danny Higgins when the teacher called on him in school. Bucky took pity on him. "She's missing a little tan kitten. I'll help her search, you go take care of your head and give me a call if you happen to come across him yourself."

"You hurt your head?" A younger woman asked as Bucky and the cat lady headed back to the remains of the building conversing with an ease that was nothing short of infuriating. Her English was heavily accented, but relatively confidently spoken, which came as a relief to Steve. They were considerably further East than his language skills prepared him for.

"I'm not injured, no. Just a headache. My hearing is enhanced and something in that mess is making a high-pitched squeal. Can I help you with anything?"

"No, I am fine. You need painkillers? I have painkillers. It is the least that I can do after what you did for my town today." She started rifling through her purse.

"That's really nice of you. Unfortunately my metabolism is also enhanced, so almost nothing works on me."

"Ah, right. I have heard stories of your abilities. Look, here." She pulled a bottle out of her purse. "I have a whole fresh bottle. It is probably not enough for you, but take the whole thing. It might help a little at least. Besides," She gave him a conspiratorial wink, "I think that our head of police is looking for you for an official report, and he is annoying when he talks. Your head needs any help it can get."

Steve accepted the bottle hesitantly. "You sure? The whole bottle?"

"Of course. I am a nurse and the doctor that I help will give me a new bottle for free when I tell him that I gave it to you. You rescued his daughter today." She offered him a water bottle as well. "As you say, bottoms up. Right?"

"Bottoms up." He conceded.

* * *

_First language Bucky tries is Russian, second is Romanian. I see a lot of people writing that they speak Russian in Sokovia, but no. They don't. We see Zemo fumbling with pronunciation of the Russian trigger words in Civil War when he's first learning them, so that is clearly NOT his native language or even one he uses much if at all. I would have said he can mostly understand it (and in his line of work I'd be surprised if he didn't) but doesn't really actually speak it._

 


End file.
